Vol:.(1234567890) Catal Lett (2017) 147:2106–2115 DOI 10.1007/s10562-017-2102-9 1 3 Vanadium (V) and Tungsten (VI) Oxoperoxo-Complexes Anchored on Fe 3 O 4 Magnetic Nanoparticles: Versatile and Efcient Catalysts for the Oxidation of Alcohols and Sulfdes Bagher Eftekhari-Sis 1  · Masoud Akbari 1  · Ali Akbari 1  · Mojtaba Amini 1   Received: 9 April 2017 / Accepted: 28 May 2017 / Published online: 7 June 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 catalytic performance. They are also very efective oxidants for oxidation of diferent organic substrates like alcohols, alkenes, sulfdes and aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons [5–7]. In addition, special attention to the coordination chemistry of vanadium and tungsten can be evoked by sub- stantial discoveries on the critical role of them in biologi- cally active systems [8, 9]. From the applied point of view, heterogeneous catalyst is the most interesting one in consideration of its easier recov- ery and recycling from the reaction mixtures [10]. Sup- porting homogeneous catalysts on a solid material, includ- ing organic polymeric resins [11–13], micro/mesoporous materials [14, 15] and inorganic supports such as silica and silicate layers [16–19], is the most used approach for het- erogenization of them. It is noteworthy that the recovery of these supported heterogeneous catalysts needs to fltration or centrifugation methods with a tedious work-up and time consuming separation process. For overcoming the afore- mentioned drawbacks, MNPs can be utilized as support due to their easy separation from reaction media by an external magnetic feld [20], simple workup process without cross- fow fltration and centrifugation, high dispersion and high degree of chemical stability [21]. In contrast, in order to increase their catalytic performance in diferent organic transformations, the post-modifcation of chemically sta- ble MNPs is needed [22–25]. In this regard, the choice of appropriate ligand groups is very important to have strong and robust metal linkage to iron oxide nanoparticle cores. Therefore, this strong linkage enables us to have stable attachments of metals to the magnetic nanoparticles which cause an easy recycling of supported complex catalysts for further catalytic runs [26]. Oxidation reactions are promising process in chemical transformation from both industrial and laboratory point of view. Among them, oxidation of alcohols [27, 28], sulfdes Abstract Vanadium (V) and tungsten (VI) oxoperoxo complexes supported on Fe 3 O 4 magnetic nanoparticles were synthesized and characterized. These compounds are assigned as catalyst 1 (C1: Fe 3 O 4 @Gly@r-Py@VO 3 ) and catalyst 2 (C2: Fe 3 O 4 @Gly@r-Py@WO 3 ), respectively, and were found to be efcient and reusable heterogeneous catalysts for the oxidation of alcohols and sulfdes using H 2 O 2 . Graphical Abstract Keywords Oxidation · Oxoperoxo complexes · Vanadium (V) · Tungsten (VI) · Fe 3 O 4 magnetic nanoparticles 1 Introduction During past two decades, considerable eforts have been devoted to the preparation and application of transition metal complexes as oxidation catalysts [1–4]. Among them, peroxide derivatives of vanadium and tungsten have high * Bagher Eftekhari-Sis eftekharisis@maragheh.ac.ir; eftekhari.sis@gmail.com 1 Department of Chemistry, University of Maragheh, Maragheh 55181-83111, Iran