Selectivity Control in Gold-Mediated Esterification of Methanol

摘要

Interest in catalysis by gold has undergone a tremendous resurgence owing to its great potential in the development of environmentally friendly processes. Following research on gold catalysis in the 1970s, this area of study lay fallow until Haruta and colleagues showed that catalytic oxidation of CO to CO2 by gold nanoparticles using gaseous O2 was significantly improved by supporting the nanoparticles on Fe2O3. Since then, a flurry of research activity has focused on understanding the basis for the activation of gold. Furthermore, a wide range of reactions have been shown to be promoted by gold catalysts under a variety of conditions, including recent studies showing that gold supported on reducible oxide supports catalyzes the aerobic oxidation of alcohols in solution. Aerobic oxidation of alcohols using gold catalysts affords the possibility of producing carbonyl derivatives with an environmentally benign process that could replace the current technology that uses heavy-metal salts as oxidizing agents.The catalytic oxidation of alcohols is also important in the development of fuel cells and in the synthesis of esters used as fragrances and flavoring.