The Performance of Gold Nanoparticles Supported on Mesoporous Zirconia for the Synthesis of Azoxybenzene

Gold nanoparticles supported on mesoporous ZrO2 were prepared and their performance for the selective reductions of nitrobenzene to azoxybenzene was investigated. It was found that azoxybenzene could be successfully synthesized over these catalysts. Furthermore, the catalytic activity of catalysts is dependent on the pore size of catalyst. The catalyst Au/ZrO2-PEG-1000 with pore size of 2.2 showed higher activity than Au/ZrO2-PEG-600 with pore size of 1.9nm.