Green phenol hydroxylation by ultrasonic-assisted synthesized Mg/Cu/Al-LDH catalyst with different molar ratios of Cu2+/Mg2+

Nitrate-intercalated Mg/Cu/Al-layered double hydroxides (LDHs) were successfully synthesized by the co-precipitation method under ultrasonic irradiation as a fast, simple, and low-cost technique. The LDHs were synthesized with six different molar ratios of Cu²⁺/Mg²⁺, and then they were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, TGA, ICP, BET, TEM, and FE-SEM analyses. The results showed that the nitrate ions were well intercalated between layers without any carbonate ions. According to the XRD and TGA results, increasing of Cu ions in the LDHs lowered the crystallization and improved the thermal stability of samples at the same time. The morphological studies carried out by FE-SEM and TEM analyses showed the morphological structure similar to the lamellar structure and plate-like shape particles. However, the surface property of binary LDHs, including Al and only one of Cu or Mg elements, was better than ternary ones. Furthermore, this catalyst was used for the phenol hydroxylation using H₂O₂ as oxidant and water as a solvent. The results exhibit that the CuMg₃₂Al-NO^3? catalyst had the best catalytic activity, as well as it was found that the catalyst is active under mild reaction conditions such as the temperature of 65 °C, phenol: oxidant ratio of 2:1, phenol/catalyst?=?100, and reaction time of 1 h. Thus, these conditions gave better activity with the conversion of 27%, the selectivity of 92.05% for catechol and hydroquinone, and CAT/HQ ratio of 1.5.