Propylene oxide (PO) is an extremely valuable commodity chemical that is commercially produced using expensive and environmentally harmful routes.  The development of an environmentally friendly and selective direct heterogeneous propylene epoxidation process, which uses O2 as the oxidizing reagent, represents a critical challenge for the field of heterogeneous catalysis. In this contribution, we demonstrate that optically excited plasmonic copper catalysts can achieve significantly higher selectivity in the direct epoxidation (using O2 as an oxidant) of propylene to form PO compared to other conventional heterogeneous catalysts. We will discuss the molecular mechanisms that govern this photocatalytic process and its implications on the family of partial oxidation reactions on coinage metals.ReferencesSuljo      Linic, Phillip Christopher, David B. Ingram, Plasmonic-metal nanostructures for      efficient conversion of solar to chemical energy, Nature Materials,  in press. Phillip Christopher, Hongliang Xin, Suljo Linic,      Visible light enhanced catalytic oxidation reactions on plasmonic silver      nanostructures, Nature Chemistry,  3, 467, 2011.

Design of selective propylene epoxidation catalysts: Heterogeneous catalysts on optically excited plasmonic metal nanostructures

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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