Ceria as an Efficient Nanocatalyst for Organic Transformations

Valuable chemicals, fuels and pharmaceuticals obtained by the transformation of raw materials have fascinated a lot of researchers in past few decades. However, to reduce problems related to these transformations different green, sustainable and economic techniques have been developed to carry out such organic transformations. Development of nanostructured catalysts has been preferred to accomplish heterogeneous catalytic organic transformations because of greater number of surface-active sites for catalytic processes, high catalyst recovery rate, environment friendly nature and their ease of synthesis. Besides the advances in nanocatalysis, certain challenges including not well-defined morphologies due to loss of control over it and loss of catalytic activity during operation need to be addressed. Ceria is actively investigated in field of catalysis. As a ubiquitous component in catalytic system, its inception is like an irreplaceable component in organic transformations. In this chapter, we appropriately reported various fabricating approaches to synthesize Cerium and CeO2-rooted nanoparticles and cerium nanoparticles supported on various support materials, accompanied with multimetallic schemes that show notable contribution to the field of catalysis. This comprehensive chapter will provide an improved understanding of nanostructured CeO2 and will provide deeper insight in the catalysis of Ce-based nanostructured materials and further widen their ambit of applications