Triethanolamine-modified mesoporous SBA-15: Facile one-pot synthesis and its catalytic application for cycloaddition of CO2 with epoxides under mild conditions

A series of triethanolamine-modified mesoporous SBA-15 catalysts were synthesized by a facile one-pot process, and used as the catalyst for the synthesis of cyclic carbonates through the cycloaddition of CO 2 with epoxides. The properties of catalysts were characterized by nitrogen adsorption–desorption, elemental analysis (EA), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra, Magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS NMR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the results suggested that triethanolamine (TEA) had been successfully immobilized on SBA-15. It was highly active in the cycloaddition reaction, in which the maximum yield of PC could achieve 93.47% under the conditions as follow: catalyst amount of 0.20 g, reaction temperature of 110 °C, reaction pressure of 2.0 MPa and reaction time of 4 h. Notably, the catalyst can be easily recovered by filtration, and it can be retained most of its catalytic stability and activity after five recycling times. On the basis of the experimental results, the interactions between the catalysts and the substrates were studied by DFT calculations, and the possible mechanism for the reaction was proposed.