Efficient electrosynthesis of highly active Cu3(BTC)2-MOF and its catalytic application to chemical reduction

Cu3(BTC)2 (Metal organic frameworks-MOF) synthesized through electrochemical route and is used as an catalyst for chemical reduction of nitrophenol in the presence of excess NaBH4. Optimization studies for the electrochemical parameters have been demonstrated in order to get 97.51% yield with respect to copper dissolution. Synthesized Cu3(BTC)2 is characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM, TEM, EDX, BET, TGA and XPS and the results reveal that supporting electrolyte, current density play a crucial role in controlling the particle size and also improving the yield of MOF. The SEM and TEM studies show that the morphology of the synthesized particles is cubic in nature and the particle size is ∼10–20 nm. The oxidation state of Cu in the synthesized Cu3(BTC)2 found to be +2 from XPS studies. Synthesized Cu3(BTC)2-MOF function as an effective catalyst to activate the reduction of p-nitrophenol to p-aminophenol in the presence of excess NaBH4 and the calculated apparent rate constant of 8.69 × 10−2 s−1 is found to be higher than the other supported noble metal nanoparticle and polymer nanocomposites.

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► A high throughput route for Cu based MOF synthesis is demonstrated.
► The nitrogen adsorption data yield a specific pore volume of 0.43 cm3 g−1 and surface area of 1498 m2 g−1.
► Heterogeneous catalytic effect has been demonstrated for the complete reduction of p-nitrophenol in the presence of Cu-MOF.
► The reaction rate was estimated to be 0.0896 s−1 at 25 °C.