Flower-like bismuth oxycarbonate-mediated selective oxidative cleavage of C–C bond in the presence of molecular oxygen

Heterogeneous catalytic and selective C–C bond cleavage is considered as the important way for the production of high valuable compounds from large-molecule-weight feedstock. In this article, a sustainable and efficient aerobic oxidative C–C bond cleavage of lignin models is developed with the bismuth-based solid catalyst. Therein, the flower-like Bi2O2CO3 exhibits a high photocatalytic efficiency in the reaction medium combined of n-butanol and tetramethylammonium bromide. For example, the selective oxidative C–C bond cleavage of 1-phenyl-ethane-1, 2-diol has been successfully carried out, where the substrate conversion and the selectivity of benzaldehyde was 95% and 99%, respectively. The study exhibited that the amount of oxygen vacancies plays a significant role on the photocatalytic selective aerobic oxidative cleavage processes. Moreover, the selective aerobic oxidative C–C bond cleavage of different lignin models was investigated, and all the yields of corresponding products are more than 90% with this photocatalytic system. Furthermore, the used flower-like Bi2O2CO3 can be recycled at least 5 times without the obvious decrease of catalytic activity.