Preparation of highly ordered Fe-SBA-15 by physical-vapor-infiltration and their application to liquid phase selective oxidation of styrene

A simple physical-vapor-infiltration (PVI) method was applied to prepare highly ordered Fe-containing mesoporous silica SBA-15. The loading amount of Fe in SBA-15 was very high (up to 24 mol%) and can be tuned by using different PVI time. The liquid phase selective oxidation of styrene with H₂O₂ has been used to characterize their catalytic properties, the major product is benzaldehyde and the minor is styrene oxide. Independent of the Fe contents and the heat treatment temperature, the selectivity for benzaldehyde in the reaction at a mild temperature of 50 °C are all above 91%. At elevated temperature of 70 °C, the conversion rate of styrene increases beyond 36% and more significantly the selectivity for benzaldehyde can reach as high as 99%. Comparatively, another two different schemes (simple wet impregnation and incorporation using silane coupling agent) have been also applied to synthesize Fe-containing SBA-15 samples. Under the same condition, the styrene conversion on these two samples are both very low with minor product of phenylacetaldehyde and other styrene oxides.