Recent advances for solid basic catalysts: Structure design and catalytic performance

Solid basic catalysts are extremely desirable in green catalytic processes, due to their advantages of facile separation, negligible corrosion and environmental friendliness. Great progress has been made in solid basic catalysts in the last decade, which have been widely used in the synthesis of organics and fine chemicals as well as environmental catalysis. Development of solid basic catalysts is therefore of significant importance both in academic area and industrial application. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of solid basic catalysts in several based-catalyzed organic reactions. The first part introduces history and significant application in chemical industry of heterogeneous basic catalysis. The second part overviews numerous solid basic catalysts classified by the type of basic sites toward fine chemicals synthesis; furthermore, the relationship between basic site structure (e.g., strength, concentration, geometric and electronic structure) and catalytic performance is also emphasized in this section. In the final section, current challenges and future strategies in field of solid basic catalysts are discussed from the viewpoint of material design, structure–property correlation and practical applications in heterogeneous catalysis processes.