Synthesis of enhanced catalytic materials in supercritical CO2

Nanostructured oxides are of utmost importance for their wide range of applications in catalysis. The rational design of the physicochemical properties of the material is the key factor in determining its catalytic performance and sometimes is limited by the classic synthetic pathways. This thesis focused on the use of scCO2 as a medium for the synthesis of nanostructured oxides and their application in related reactions in the context of green chemistry, such as oxidation reactions with H2O2 as environmentally friendly oxidant and transformation of bio-based sugars into valuable platform chemicals under mild reaction conditions, e.g. low reaction temperature, low catalyst loading and short reaction time. Importantly, the synthetic approaches developed in this thesis may be applied to the synthesis of other catalytically relevant materials, which can be used as heterogeneous catalysts for many relevant reactions.