Epoxidation of Vinyl Cyanides by Lithium Hypochlorite in the presence of Fe3O4@Ag-CTAB as a new ecofriendly catalyst in aqueous medium

To cater for the requirement of environmental protection, CTAB-coated Fe3O4@Ag Nanoparticles as a new hybrid magnetic catalyst was prepared for the one-pot multicomponent epoxidation of a wide range of alkenes by lithium hypochlorite (LiOCl) in aqueous medium. FT-IR, TEM, XRD, EDS and VSM techniques were employed to characterize the structure of the magnetic catalyst. The results obtained revealed that the cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) modification effectively decreased the particle size and enhanced the dispersion of the particles in solution. Application of this catalyst was studied efficiently in one-pot multicomponent synthesis of epoxide derivatives. The structure of the synthesized epoxides was confirmed by FT-IR, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR and elemental analysis. The main advantages of our work are reusability of the catalyst, easy work up, Short reaction times and use of water as a green solvent.