Improved catalytic performance of porous metal–organic frameworks for the ring opening of styrene oxide

An emerging strategy to improve the performance of porous metal-organic framework (MOF) materials as heterogeneous catalysts is reported. The incorporation of the iron-substituted polyoxometalate (POM) TBA(4)[PW11Fe(H2O)O-39] (PW11Fe) in porous MOF NH2-MIL-101(Fe), leading to a novel composite based MOF material, PW11Fe@NH2-MIL-101(Fe), was revealed to be a significant approach to increase the efficiency of the MOF material as a regioselective catalyst for the ring opening of styrene oxide with aniline. The conversion after 1 h of reaction using NH2-MIL-101(Fe) is 22% and increases to 100% when PW11Fe@NH2-MIL-101(Fe) is employed as catalyst. It is noteworthy that the catalytic performance of this composite material is also considerably better than that obtained with the respective physical mixture under similar conditions. Furthermore, PW11Fe@NH2-MIL-101(Fe) revealed to be a remarkable selective heterogeneous catalyst for the studied reaction (100% selectivity to the 2-phenylamino-2-phenylethanol isomer) with significant robustness and recyclability.