Studying the Characteristics and Performance of a New Heterogeneous Catalyst Pre-templated Using Cu(II) Schiff Base Complex on reducing 4-nitrophenol.

Abstract

: The conversion of nitro compounds to their corresponding amino compounds by reduction route is a significant chemical reaction from an industrial and environmental standpoint. In the present paper, copper Schiff base complex was successfully prepared from the reaction between (1, 1 -(pyridine-2,3-dimethyl imino methyl)naphthalene-2,2 –diol) and Cu(CH 3 COO) 2 salt. This was successfully characterized with different techniques and grafted over graphene oxide (GO) as support after functionalizing it via chemical grafting using aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) as a linker to obtain the functionalized form (FGO). The new heterogeneous complex (CuMGO) was depicted using physicochemical and spectroscopic tools such as FT-IR, UV-Vis, SEM, XRD, Raman spectroscopy, and XPS. The results manifest that Cu(II) imine complex was successfully immobilized on GO. The resulting catalyst was used to reduce 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to its corresponding amine 4-aminophenol (4-AP) at room temperature in case of using hydrazine hydrate as a reducing agent. It showed good activity with a percent of conversion (44.4%) and an apparent rate constant of 2.06 × 10-3 min-1 in about 130 min. The prepared catalyst can be recycled five times without losing its activity.