Metal Organic Nanotube as an Efficient Ligand Support Platform: The Catalytic Properties of Supported Amino Alcohol Ligand in Henry Reaction

Abstract Copper organic nanotube (CuONT) was used as a ligand support platform to simply load a chiral amino alcohol ligand ( L ) with two coordination centers to give the catalysts (5%–20% CuL/CuONT). Then, the catalytic properties of these catalysts for Henry reaction were studied. Under the optimized conditions, the reaction yields were 66.5%–87.4% and the ee values were 83.1%–93.7% in 11 aromatic aldehydes in tetrahydrofuran at room temperature. Compared with the catalytic results of the unsupported ligand L , the yields and ee values are slightly lower. However, this study has achieved an effective recovery and reuse of metal ions and ligands, which effectively reduce the catalytic costs and conform to the green chemistry concept. Moreover, the recovered catalyst 10 % L /CuONT was used in a large‐scale reaction up to 25 mmol and then the subsequent 5 recycling processes. It is found that the catalytic activities and ee values show no significant decrease, and even the yield is slightly higher than that of the newly prepared catalyst. These results demonstrate that it is an effective way to use MONT as a two coordinate ligand carrier for preparing recyclable catalysts.