Since the discovery of mesoporous materials in late 20<sup>th</sup> century and advances in synthetic methods for microporous materials, many important applications have been developed and reported in heterogeneous catalysis. Incorporating high surface area porous silica as catalyst supports have led to new developments in controlling reactions by tuning the pore environment for both single-site and multi-site catalysts. The unique properties of these mesoporous materials allow for modification of both the internal pore surface and external surface independently to target locations of catalysis.<br/>One advantage to this system is enhanced biocompatibility towards microorganisms when toxic catalysts are placed in the internal pores. We show the we can convert aldehyde products from microorganisms in the presence of living species because the toxic organic catalysts are tethered inside the pores of mesoporous silica. This allows for in situ systems that directly converts natural products to value-added products in aqueous systems. We also utilize the unique structural properties of mesoporous silica to produce tandem catalytic systems that utilize tethered enzymes alongside supported gold nanoparticles to oxidatively produce esters from naturally produced alcohols.

Tandem and aqueous phase heterogeneous catalytic systems

255th National Meeting (2018)

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