Efficient Catalytic Reduction of 4-Nitrophenol Using Copper(II) Complexes with N,O-Chelating Schiff Base Ligands.

The reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol by sodium borohydride was used as a model to test the catalytic activity of copper(II) complexes containing N,O-chelating Schiff base ligands. In this study, a series of copper(II) complexes containing respective Schiff base ligands, '-salicylidene-2-aminophenol (), '-salicylidene-2-aminothiazole (), and -bis(salicylidene)-o-phenylenediamine (), were synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), UV-Visible (UV-Vis) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopies. The results from the 4-nitrophenol reduction showed that has the highest catalytic activities with 97.