Mesoporous inorganic salts with crystal defects: unusual catalysts and catalyst supports.

We proposed a strategy to synthesize mesoporous inorganic salt particles using the special properties of ionic liquid (IL) mixtures, and hollow mesoporous LaF, NdF, and YF particles were synthesized and characterized using different techniques. The size of the mesopores in the salt particles was about 4 nm, and the materials were full of crystal defects. The LaF, NdF and YF particles were used as the catalysts for the cyanosilylation reaction of benzaldehyde using trimethylsilyl cyanide, and Ru/LaF and Ru/NdF, in which Ru nanocatalysts were supported on the LaF and NdF particles with mesopores, were used to catalyze hydrogenations of benzene to cyclohexane and levulinic acid (LA) to γ-valerolactone (GVL). It was discovered that the activities of these catalysts were unprecedentedly high for these reactions. Detailed study showed that both the crystal defects and the mesopores in the salt particles played crucial roles for the extremely high catalytic activity.