Green synthesis of magnetic copper ferrite nanoparticles using tragacanth gum as a biotemplate and their catalytic activity for the oxidation of alcohols

Abstract

During this study, we report the green synthesis of magnetic copper ferrite nanoparticles using tragacanth gum as a reducing and stabilizing agent by the sol-gel method. The green synthesized CuFe₂O₄ MNPs are characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the formation of Cubic phase ferrite MNPs with average crystallite size of 14 nm. This study has demonstrated that CuFe₂O₄ nanoparticles can act as an efficient catalyst for selective oxidations of alcohols applying oxone (potassium hydrogen monopersulfate) as oxidant in the presence of acetonitrile as solvent at 40 ºC. Primary and secondary alcohols gave the corresponding products in good yields. Furthermore, the catalyst can be simply recovered and reused several times with almost no loss in activity.