Zinc Oxide/Graphene Oxide as a Robust Active Catalyst for Direct Oxidative Synthesis of Nitriles from Alcohols in Water

In this work, without using any linker or chemical modification of graphene oxide, a zinc oxide immobilized graphene oxide-based catalyst was used for the direct aerobic oxidative conversion of alcohols to the nitriles in water. In the first step, graphene oxide was prepared and then zinc ions were electrostatically adsorbed onto the surface of graphene oxide. In the following step, zinc oxide nanoparticles were generated via in-situ growth in presence of NaOH. It was illustrated that graphene oxide layers can control the size of in-situ generated zinc oxide nanoparticles. Various aromatic/aliphatic/heteroaromatic primary alcohols converted to the nitriles in high yields under O2 balloon with ZnO/GO catalyst. This catalyst can be used for 7 successful consecutive runs without significant loss of activity.