Fiber-supported Fe(III) complex catalyst in spinning basket reactor for cleaner ring-opening of epoxides with alcohols

Herein, a newly designed fiber-supported iron catalyst was successfully synthesized by rooting diamine ligands into the surface layer of commercially available polyacrylonitrile fiber and then utilizing the diamine groups to immobilize Fe(III) ions for heterogeneous catalytic ring-opening reactions. The resulting materials were characterized and observed in detail by elemental analysis, mechanical properties, FTIR spectroscopy and morphology during both the preparation and the utilization processes. Moreover, the fiber catalyst was used in the spinning basket reactor-mediated ring-opening of various epoxides by a series of alcohols under mild reaction conditions, giving good to quantitative yields of the corresponding β-alkoxy alcohols. In addition, the fiber catalyst in the impellers of the agitation system was shown to be reusable multiple times without leaching of the Fe(III) ions, and when stored on the shelf remained equally active for at least three months. Furthermore, the catalytic system was convenient and effective for scaling-up experiments and thereby has prospects in industrial applications.