Cooperative catalysis is achieved through judiciously combining two catalytic species in close proximity. While nature routinely employs cooperative interactions, these are challenging to achieve in heterogeneous catalytic materials because synthetic techniques tend to produce a distribution of catalytic sites. We take a molecular approach to create well-defined catalytic sites in silica materials. We use these materials to gain greater mechanistic insights on cooperative interactions for important catalytic reactions. We demonstrate full characterization of these catalytic materials and catalytic results showing improved selectivity for biomass-related reactions. Specifically, we demonstrate a type of cooperativity to increase the catalytic selectivity through co-immobilizing acidic sites adjacent to “solvent” like interactions that serve to stabilize the desired product. The molecular design enables us to elucidate important aspects of the catalyst design.

Molecular design of cooperative interactions for amorphous silica materials to tune catalytic selectivities

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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