Preparation of bifunctional core-shell structured Cu/TS-1@MCM-41 molecular sieves for synthesis of aniline by benzene in one step amination

Abstract The synthesis of aniline by one step amination of benzene has always been a great challenge. In this work, we used CTAB as the structure-directing agent (SDA) to synthesize the MCM-41 shell with an ordered hexagonal mesoporous structures covered on surface of the titanium silicalite-1 nanoparticle by a self-assembly method. And a bifunctional catalyst Cu/TS-1@MCM-41 was synthesized by loading metal copper species to achieve one-step amination of benzene. X-ray diffraction, N 2 adsorption–desorption, SEM, TEM, FT-IR, UV–vis DRS and XPS were used to characterize Cu/TS-1@MCM-41 to find out the crystal structure and physical properties of the catalyst. The catalyst was successfully applied in the reaction of benzene to aniline by one-step amination and exhibited good catalytic performance and no formation of by-product phenol. And according to the experimental results, a reasonable catalytic pathway for amination of benzene over Cu/TS-1@MCM-41 was proposed.