A facile strategy for the preparation of well-dispersed bimetal oxide CuFe2O4 nanoparticles supported on mesoporous silica

The synthesis of supported bimetal oxide nanoparticles for catalytic applications has greatly suffered from the strong phase separation trend and particle aggregation problem. We found that just adding facile pre-drying treatment before the calcination step can sufficiently avoid the phase separation and prevent the particles from aggregation. Well dispersed pure phase CuFe2O4 supported on a mesoporous silica catalyst was thus synthesized by using copper and iron nitrates as the precursors and KIT-6 as the support. It was used as the catalyst for the asymmetric hydrosilylation of aryl ketone. The reaction yield and ee value can both reach 93%. The synthesized CuFe2O4 possesses superparamagnetic properties, which ensures it can be easily recycled by an external magnetic field for reuse. This synthesis strategy can also be applied to various bimetal oxides, including NiFe2O4, CuCr2O4, CoFe2O4, etc.