A novel approach to prepare MCM-41 supported CuO catalyst with high metal loading and dispersion

In the present research, CuO was abundantly and evenly dispersed onto the mesoporous molecular sieves MCM-41 via the following novel method: MCM-41 support was above all modified with organic silicanes; the organofunctionalized MCM-41 then coordinated with cupric ions; the ultrasonic washing and calcination were afterwards orderly performed on the as-synthesized sample. The resultant catalyst was characterized by nitrogen adsorption–desorption analysis, temperature-programmed reduction (TPR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and ICP-AES techniques. The influences of cupric ion concentration, different organic functional groups and the effects of the ultrasonic washing on the dispersion and loading amount of CuO were also investigated and discussed. A comparison was made between the present method and the simple ion-exchange of AlMCM-41 with copper nitrate. Shown by experiment, MCM-41 maintains its ordered mesoporous structure after the dispersion of CuO. Meanwhile, some CuO are dispersed on the external surface of MCM-41 in very small particles, while the others are dispersed inside the pores of MCM-41. The effective preparative strategy introduced in this paper is a very promising method for preparing MCM-41 supported metal oxide catalyst with high metal loading and dispersion.