Gold on thiol-functionalized magnetic mesoporous silica sphere catalyst for the aerobic oxidation of olefins

•A facile method was put forward to prepare the catalyst MSS-SH-Au0.•The catalyst had mesoporous structure and Au NPs were well dispersed in the MSS.•The catalyst showed high activity in oxidations of cyclohexene and styrene by oxygen.•The catalyst was easily recovered with external magnetic field.•The catalytic could be reused for five times without any obvious loss of activity.

We have synthesized a new catalyst based on thiol-functionalized silica-coated magnetic mesoporous nanocrystals as support and Au nanoparticles as active sites through a facile and environment-friendly approach and characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), N2 adsorption–desorption, elemental analysis and inductive coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer (ICP-AES), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The synthesized catalyst exhibited high catalytic activity in the oxidations of cyclohexene and styrene by molecular oxygen at atmospheric pressure. Furthermore, this catalyst had an excellent recyclability, evidenced by being extensively reused for five times without any substantial loss of activity, which was mainly attributed to the enough strong combination between the Au nanoparticles and thiol groups onto the surface of support. Meanwhile, the catalyst could be easily separated from the reaction solution by applying an external magnetic field.

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