Five different nanocerias were prepared and used to catalyze the direct coupling of alcohol and amine to the corresponding imines under air atmosphere at low temperature. The catalytic efficiencies have great differences, CeO₂ prepared by coprecipitation at room temperature (called CeO₂-5) has the best catalytic activity, whose yield reaches 99% at 303 K for 36 h, 100 times higher than the nano-octahedras ceria (called CeO₂-4) and also higher than the catalytic performance of most reported catalysts. Such phenomena are ascribed to the higher acidic sites, specific surface area, and proportions of surface oxygen. The results of DRIFTS demonstrated that the alcohol oxidized to benzaldehyde was the rate determining step in this reaction. Furthermore, CeO₂-5 still shows excellent catalytic performance on 10-fold magnification experiments without any addition of solvent. Besides, it has the advantages of simple process, low energy consumption and practical scaling-up as well as good universality towards this kind of reaction, showing every prospect in industrial application.

制备了五种不同的纳米二氧化铈，并用于在低温空气气氛下催化醇和胺与相应的亚胺的直接偶联。催化效率有很大差异，在室温下通过共沉淀法制备的CeO ₂（称为CeO ₂ -5）具有最佳的催化活性，在303 K下36 h的收率达到99％，是纳米八面体二氧化铈的100倍。称为CeO ₂ -4），并且也高于大多数报道的催化剂的催化性能。这种现象归因于较高的酸性位点，比表面积和表面氧的比例。DRIFTS的结果表明，氧化为苯甲醛的醇是该反应的速率确定步骤。此外，CeO₂ -5在不添加任何溶剂的情况下，在10倍放大率实验中仍显示出出色的催化性能。此外，它具有工艺简单，能耗低，实用规模化，对此类反应通用性强等优点，在工业应用中显示出广阔的前景。