Zn Promoted Mg-Al Mixed Oxides-Supported Gold Nanoclusters for Direct Oxidative Esterification of Aldehyde to Ester

The synthesis of ester compounds is one of the most important chemical processes. In this work, Zn-Mg-Al mixed oxides with different Zn(2+)/Mg(2+) molar ratios were prepared via co-precipitation method and supported gold nanoclusters to study the direct oxidative esterification of aldehyde and alcohol in the presence of molecular oxygen. Various characterization techniques such as N(2)-physical adsorption, X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and CO(2) temperature programmed desorption (TPD) were utilized to analyze the structural and electronic properties. Based on the results, the presence of small amounts of Zn(2+) ions (~5 wt.%) provoked a remarkable modification of the binary Mg-Al system, which enhanced the interaction between gold with the support and reduced the particle size of gold. For oxidative esterification reaction, the Au(25)/Zn(0.05)MgAl-400 catalyst showed the best performance, with the highest turnover frequency (TOF) of 1933 h(−1). The active center was believed to be located at the interface between metallic gold with the support, where basic sites contribute a lot to transformation of the substrate.