Functionalized expanded corn starch-anchored Cu(I): An efficient and recyclable catalyst for oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural to 2,5-diformylfuran

The development of new strategies for the synthesis of biomass-based non-precious metal heterogeneous catalysts has recently received great interest from chemists because of the advantages of these catalytic systems being sustainable, low cost and green. An expanded corn starch-supported CuBr catalyst (ECS-SB-CuBr) has been successfully prepared and well characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, powder X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Further, ECS-SB-CuBr was used as a heterogeneous catalyst for the selective oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) into 2,5-diformylfuran (DFF) and a full HMF conversion is obtained with 98% DFF yield in acetonitrile under ambient pressure of dioxygen at 50 degrees C. The catalyst also showed good reusability, could be easily recovered through filtration and washing and was reused in at least six consecutive runs with virtually no loss of catalytic performance.