Rational design of carbon support to prepare ultrafine iron oxide catalysts for air oxidation of alcohols

A kind of mesoporous carbon support with abundant surface functional groups and a tunable pore size was prepared using a modified hard-template route. This carbon support was demonstrated to be efficient for fabricating ultrafine iron oxide catalysts, and the resultant catalysts exhibit an obviously higher activity in air oxidation of several benzyl alcohols compared with the catalysts with other synthetic carbon as supports. The concrete role of carbon support in the catalyst design was investigated in detail. The negatively charged surface oxygen functional groups serve as strongly active sites for anchoring positively charged Fe3+ ions and lead to high dispersion of iron oxide species. These oxygen functional groups also provide a suitable coordinate environment to increase the electron density of iron centres and form efficient active sites for the oxidation of benzyl alcohols with molecular oxygen.