PILs@ZnO with oxygen vacancies for facilitating synthesis of DMC in transesterification

Pyrrolium-based polymeric ionic liquids-functionalized ZnO nanocatalysts (PILs@ZnO) with an oxygen-vacancy-enriched interface were fabricated via in-situ oxidative polymerization to resolve the entrainment phenomenon in reactive distillation process of producing DMC. The unique interfacial microenvironment effectively modulates the electronic structures and enhances the synergistic catalysis, which could lower the reaction temperature of transesterification between ethylene carbonate and dimethyl carbonate to ambient conditions, and performed the results of EC conversion with 86.7% and DMC selectivity with over than 99.0%. Physicochemical characterizations including FTIR, XRD, XPS and HRTEM were combined with in-situ FTIR and NMR to reveal the structure-activity relationship and further proposed its probably real-time catalytic process.