Tridoped Mesoporous Carbon as a Metal-Free Catalyst for Ammoxidation of (Hetero)Aromatic Alcohols to Nitriles

Ammoxidation of alcohols is a promising cyanide-free strategy for the synthesis of organic nitriles. It is desirable but challenging to conduct nitrile synthesis over a heterogeneous metal-free catalyst with aqueous ammonia as a nitrogen source and molecular oxygen as an oxidant. In the present work, an Se,P,N-tridoped carbon nanomaterial (Se,P,N/CN-900) was prepared and used as a metal-free catalyst for the direct ammoxidation of alcohols to nitriles with aqueous ammonia and molecular oxygen. The synergistic effect was revealed for the highly efficient catalytic performance of the tridoped carbon catalyst. The present catalyst showed good stability, and various (hetero)aromatic alcohols can be converted to the corresponding nitriles with high yields. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to achieve ammoxidation of alcohols to nitriles with a high efficiency over multidoped carbon materials.