Selective aerobic oxidative C–C bond cleavage using a high-entropy oxide-derived multimetallic catalyst

The use of high-entropy oxides (HEOs) in heterogeneous catalysis is a fascinating research direction in the chemical field. In this work, a highly selective aerobic oxidative C–C bond cleavage using a 1,2-diol and lignin model is achieved with the HEOs-derived multimetallic catalyst. In the transformation of 1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol, a 96.1% conversion with 96.2% selectivity of benzaldehyde was obtained using MgCuMnFeCo–R as the catalyst. Therein, the partial reduction of Fe2+ and Co2+ leading to the formation of numerous oxygen vacancies, plays a crucial role in the excellent catalytic activity. Moreover, this HEO-derived catalyst could maintain high activity even after being reused more than 10 times.