Ultrasound-Mediated Synthesis Of Nanoscale Cu₂(OH)PO₄

It is well-known that a complex oxide of copper hydroxyphosphate is a goodheterogeneous catalyst with high activities in oxidation and hydroxylation reaction. Accordingto the literature, the particle size prepared by conventional hydrothermal process is100²000μm, and the surface area is low, it may limit its catalytic activity. Herein weproposed a novel method to prepare nano-sized Cu₂(OH)PO₄, which applied the ultrasound tothe conventional process. The initial mass ratio of starting mixture was the same as theconventional one. After several hours' sonic treatment, we obtained the nano-sizedCu₂(OH)PO₄ particles. And we compared the catalytic activities in phenol hydroxylation byH₂O₂ over various samples, such as the conventional one, the little one by grinding, and thenano-sized Cu₂(OH)PO₄. To the best of our knowledge, the copper species might becatalytically active in this catalytic reaction. The higher surface area caused by smallerparticle size made more reactants interacting with the active site. The catalytic results verifiedthat the smaller the sample was, the higher its activity was. We got the conclusion that thehigher surface area may be a key factor to increase the catalytic activity.