Titanium-containing mesoporous molecular sieves for catalytic oxidation of aromatic compounds

Titanium silicalite is an effective molecular-sieve catalyst for the selective oxidation of alkanes, the hydroxylation of phenol and the epoxidation of alkenes in the presence of H2O2 (refs 1-3). The range of organic compounds that can be oxidized is greatly limited, however, by the relatively small pore size (about 0.6 nm) of the host framework. Large-pore (mesoporous) silica-based molecular sieves have been prepared recently by Kresge et al. and Kuroda et al.; the former used a templating approach in which the formation of an inorganic mesoporous structure is assisted by self-organization of surfactants, and the latter involved topochemical rearrangement of a layered silica precursor. Here we describe the use of the templating approach to synthesize mesoporous silica-based molecular sieves partly substituted with titanium--large-pore analogues of titanium silicalite. We find that these materials show selective catalytic activity towards the oxidation of 2,6-di-tert-butyl phenol to the corresponding quinone and the conversion of benzene to phenol.