Structure matching mechanism of <scp>nRu</scp>/<scp>FeCo<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub></scp> for highly‐selective oxidation of <scp>HMF</scp> toward <scp>FDCA</scp>
Qingwei Wang, Yucheng Zhu, Run Jiang, He Gan, Jun Zhao, Jun Hu, Tao Liu, Honghai Liu, Siew‐Leng Loo, Zhong Chen, Jie‐Xin Wang, Zhiyan Pan, Xiaonian Li, Dapeng Cao, Zhong‐Ting Hu
Abstract
Abstract The selective oxidation of 5‐hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) toward 2,5‐furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) offers a promising green pathway to obtain monomers for the synthesis of biodegradable plastics. However, developing a high‐selectivity catalyst and understanding the catalytic mechanism are still great challenge. Here, we synthesize a nRu/FeCo 2 O 4 catalyst with Ru nanoparticles loaded on FeCo 2 O 4 . The nRu/FeCo 2 O 4 presents excellent HMF oxidation activity with 100% HMF conversion efficiency and 99% FDCA yield under optimized conditions. Density‐functional theory calculations further reveal the structure matching mechanism of nRu/FeCo 2 O 4 for high‐selective oxidation of HMF toward FDCA, that is, Ru loading in FeCo 2 O 4 provides a more suitable structure matching configuration for adsorption of two‐side chains in HMF, which could optimize the adsorption energy and thus increase reactivity. In short, this work provides a promising structure matching strategy for designing dual‐active‐site relay catalyst to oxidize ‐CHO and C‐OH groups in HMF and thus achieve highly‐selective oxidation of HMF toward FDCA.