Chinese Journal of Catalysis ›› 2019, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (10): 1505-1515.DOI: 10.1016/S1872-2067(19)63418-2

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On the comparable activity in plasmonic photocatalytic and thermocatalytic oxidative homocoupling of alkynes over prereduced copper ferrite

Ying Zhu, Nan Deng, Meiqing Feng, Peng Liu   

  1. Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage(Ministry of Education), Hubei Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry and Service Failure, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China
  • Received:2019-06-10 Revised:2019-07-06 Online:2019-10-18 Published:2019-08-26
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21673088).

Abstract: Despite of extensive attention on the copper-based heterogeneous oxidative homocoupling of alkynes (OHA) to 1,3-diynes, the photocatalytic OHA is scarcely investigated. By screening copper-containing spinel catalysts, we discovered that a prereduced copper ferrite (CuFe2O4) not only can catalyze the thermocatalytic OHA but also is efficient for the photocatalytic OHA under visible light irradiation. It is found that the sol-gel combustion (SG) method and the partial reduction at 250℃ can result in the optimal CuFe2O4-SG-250 catalyst showing high activity and stability. Surface oxidized Cu2O is evidenced to be the active species for the thermocatalytic OHA, whereas metallic copper nanopaticles (CuNPs) are identified as the active sites for the photocatalytic OHA. The efficiency of photocatalytic OHA at ambient temperature is comparable to that of thermocatalytic OHA at 120℃, and the CuFe2O4-SG-250 catalyst can be magnetically separated and reused at least five times. The localized surface plasmon resonance effect of CuNPs contributes to visible light-induced photocatalytic OHA.

Key words: Alkyne, Homocoupling, Copper ferrite, Copper nanoparticles, Surface plasmon resonance