A recyclable CoGa intermetallic compound catalyst for the hydroformylation reaction

Metal leaching is an important obstacle for the development of CO-containing heterogeneous catalysis systems. The modulation of the metal surface could substantially influence the structural stability under a CO atmosphere. In this work, the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) results indicate that the leaching amount of cobalt in the CoGa intermetallic compound (CoGa IMC/SiO2) catalyst is notably less than that of the Co/SiO2 catalyst in hydroformylation reaction. The in situ Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) results prove that aldehydes can be generated on CoGa IMC/SiO2 by heterogeneous hydroformylation reaction without the formation of Co carbonyl species. Moreover, the analysis of metal bond interaction proves that although the Co-Ga bond has a weaker metal interaction strength in the bulk phase, it has higher structural stability than the Co-Co bond with the adsorption of CO molecules. Above all, this work provides a strategy to suppress metal leaching for heterogeneous catalysis.