Highly efficient base catalysis and sulfide oxidation reactions over new functionalized mesoporous polymers

Base catalyzed aldol condensation reactions and selective partial oxidation of sulfides are very important classes of reactions in synthetic organic chemistry. We have prepared a new alkali exchanged form of mesoporous polytriallylamine, OH-MPTA-1 and a Cr-grafted material Cr-MPTA-1 via the simple and facile in situ radical polymerization of a triallylamine template by organic-organic self-assembly of anionic surfactant systems. The materials have been characterized by elemental analysis, powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Powder XRD and TEM image analyses suggests the presence of mesophase and disordered wormhole-like mesopores in these samples. Our experimental results reveal that the alkali exchanged material OH-MPTA-1 acts as a very efficient base catalyst for the direct aldol reaction of different aromatic aldehydes with acetone. On the other hand, the Cr-grafted material Cr-MPTA-1, obtained through the reaction of potassium chromate with MPTA-1, acts as a very efficient catalyst for the liquid phase partial oxidation of sulfides to sulfoxides. Both OH-MPTA-1 and Cr-MPTA-1 can be recycled more than five times without an appreciable loss in activity for their respective catalytic reactions.