Binary carbon@silica@carbon hydrophobic nanoreactor for highly efficient selective oxidation of aromatic alkanes

Nanoreactors with delimited void space and a large number of mesoporous structures have attracted great attentions as potential heterogeneous catalysts. In this work, cobalt and nitrogen co-doped binary carbon@silica@carbon hydrophobic nanoreactor was synthesized by an in-situ synthesis method. Cobalt porphyrin was used as active component to construct Co-Nx, and the purpose of the double carbon layers coating was to enhance the hydrophobicity of the surface of the nanoreactor. The optimal nanoreactor could achieve 96.9% ethylbenzene conversion and 99.1% acetophenone selectivity and showed outstanding universality to many other aromatic alkanes. The superior performance was mainly due to the presence of double carbon layers and high content of Co-Nx sites. The double hydrophobic carbon layers coating could not only promote the adsorption of organic molecules, but also implant active sites Co-Nx on both the inner and outer surfaces of the nanoreactor. This work proposed a meaningful strategy to obtain highly efficient nanoreactor for C-H bond oxidation.