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Amino-Functionalized Mesostructured Cellular Foam Silica: A Highly Efficient And Recyclable Catalyst In The Knoevenagel Condensation Reaction, Dong Hao, Hongyuan Yang, Tengfei Zhang, Qing Liu

Turkish Journal of Chemistry

Mesostructured cellular foam silica was functionalized by an amino group (MCF-NH$_{2})$ using the postsynthesis grafting method and utilized as a recyclable catalyst for the Knoevenagel reaction to afford $\alpha $, $\beta $-unsaturated compounds. The catalyst was systematically characterized by various analyses such as nitrogen adsorption, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and Hammett indicator method. The results showed that MCF-NH$_{2}$ catalyst was successfully prepared with a high surface area of 215 m$^{2}$ g$^{-1}$ and a large pore volume of 1.37 cm$^{3}$ g$^{-1}$. Compared with the nonfunctionalized MCF sample, the window and cell …