Guanine-derived nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets for selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol

Nitrogen-doped carbon materials as metal-free catalysts have attracted considerable attention in selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol. However, the real active sites are still ambiguous due to complexities of surface functional groups and nitrogen species. Herein, a series of nitrogen-doped nanosheets with different N species content are simply fabricated, which exhibits excellent catalytic activity with 82–93 % conversion and 89–99 % selectivity in selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol into benzaldehyde. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the conversion of benzyl alcohol mainly depends on the hydroxyl functional groups, while both graphitic and pyridinic nitrogen are key factors to determine the selectivity of benzaldehyde. The present work demonstrates the structure-activity relationships between the catalytic performance for catalytic oxidation of benzyl alcohol and the surface functional groups of catalysts, paving the way for development of highly efficient nanocarbon catalysts.