Nanosized vanadium, tungsten and molybdenum oxide clusters grown in porous chitosan microspheres as promising hybrid materials for selective alcohol oxidation.

The ability of chitosan biopolymer to coordinate vanadium, tungsten and molybdenum metallic species and to control their mineralisation growth provides a new family of surface-reactive organic-inorganic hybrid microspheres. Drying the resulting materials under supercritical conditions allowed the gel network dispersion to be retained, thereby leading to a macroporous catalyst with surface areas ranging from 253 to 278 m(2) g(-1). On account of the open framework structure of these microspheres, the redox species entangled within the fibrillar network of the polysaccharide aerogels were found to be active, selective and reusable catalysts for cinamylalcohol oxidations.