Nanoporous ZnO Supported CuBr (CuBr/ZnO): An Efficient Catalyst for CO2 Fixation Reactions

Two very important catalytic transformations for CO2 in recent years are terminal alkyne carboxylation and amine formylation. Hydrothermal and impregnation methods have been used to produce nanoporous ZnO and CuBr/ZnO materials respectively. The materials are characterized by different characterization methods like PXRD, FTIR, FESEM, TEM, TG-DTA and EDAX. The CuBr/ZnO material showed flowerlike morphology with nanoporous nature and also showed excellent catalytic activity towards synthesis of different propiolic acids and N-formylated amines under 1 atmospheric pressure of CO2 at gentle reaction conditions with selectively high yields for the desired products. The CuBr/ZnO material showed good recycling efficiency as a promising and cheap heterogeneous catalyst upto 5 reaction cycles with negligible amount of catalyst deactivation for both the reactions.