New catalytic systems based on carbon nanotubes supported ionic liquid phase

Abstract

As catalytic support, carbon nanotubes present an open macrostructure with large mesoporosity which avoids mass transfer limitations. Ionic Liquids (ILs) have received much attention in the past years due to their importance in a broad range of applications. In catalysis, they are used to immobilize the catalyst in biphasic reactions and enable an easy separation. Their ionic character confers to these media a special organization of several nanometers that induces solvation phenomena and specific reactivity that can be linked either to confinement effects in the organized structure or to molecular interactions. However, these solvents remain expensive and the fact to support them onto carbon nanotubes as a thin film should permit to reduce significantly the volumes used. In this PhD thesis in order to prepare carbon nanotubes-IL hybrid materials, multi-walled carbon nanotubes were covalently modified with imidazolium salt-based moieties. This functionalization allowed specific interactions between the IL thin film and the chemical moieties on the MWCNTs surface. Then, the catalyst (rhodium complex or palladium nanoparticles) was immobilized into the IL thin film. The catalytic performances have been evaluated in bench reactions: hydrogenation of 1-hexene for rhodium, and selective hydrogenation, Heck, and sequential Heck/hydrogentation process for palladium. Finally, a comparative study has been performed between carbon nanotubes and other classical mesoporous oxide supports, including silica. The carbon nanotubes based catalyst present better performances than their counterparts prepared on conventional supports. Additionally, composites based on SiO2/IL or Al2O3/IL were prepared to carry out a structural study with the aim of understanding their specific surface interactions and compare them to pure ionic liquid