Nickel salt of phosphomolybdic acid as a bi-functional homogeneous recyclable catalyst for base free transformation of aldehyde into ester

A Ni salt of phosphomolybdic acid (NiHPMA) was synthesized and characterized by various physico-chemical techniques such as EDX, UV-Visible spectroscopy, FT-IR, Raman spectroscopy and XPS. FT-IR and Raman spectroscopy confirm the presence of Ni as a counter cation while UV-Visible and XPS studies to confirm the presence of Ni(ii) in the catalyst. The catalyst was evaluated for its bi-functional activity towards the tandem conversion of benzaldehyde to ethyl benzoate and it was found that very small amounts of Ni (2.64 × 10(−3) mmol) enhance the selectivity towards benzoate. A detailed mechanistic study was carried out by UV-Visible and Raman spectroscopy to confirm that both intermediate species, Mo–peroxo and Ni–oxo, are responsible for higher selectivity towards esters. Further, a study to determine the effect of addenda atoms (heteropoly acid) was also carried out. The catalyst was also found to be viable for a number of aldehydes under optimized conditions.