Facile encapsulation of a cobalt complex inside the micropores of ZIF-8 through the bottle around the ship method: A novel heterogeneous catalyst for epoxidation of alkenes

•Co complex was encapsulated in ZIF-8 micropores via bottle around the ship method.•The heterogeneous catalyst was used in alkene epoxidation with high selectivity.•The heterogeneous catalyst showed higher activity compared to ZIF-8 and Co complex.•Reaction mechanism was studied and the involvement of radical species was approved. A novel and stable heterogeneous catalyst for alkene epoxidation reaction, named as CoDMG@ZIF-8, has been synthesized by facile encapsulation of Co(III) complex i.e. [Co(DMGH)(DMGH2)Cl2] (abbreviated as CoDMG, DMGH2 denotes for dimethylglyoxime and DMGH denotes for dimethylglyoxime mono anion) inside the ZIF-8 micropores via a solvothermal process. Based on the results of fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), it was observed that the catalyst has maintained the structure, crystallinity and morphology of the parent ZIF-8 as well. Furthermore, CHN, DRS (diffuse reflectance spectra), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), induced coupled plasma (ICP-OES), thermal gravimetric (TGA) and nitrogen adsorption-desorption (BET method) analyses have confirmed the encapsulation of the CoDMG complex. The epoxidation reaction was performed using tert‑butyl hydroperoxide (TBHP) in CH3CN solvent in the presence of catalyst. By optimizing the reaction parameters, a total conversion of 96 % with 82 % selectivity towards the epoxide product, was achieved. It was found that both CoDMG complex and ZIF-8 exhibited lower efficiency individually, while the encapsulation of this complex inside the ZIF-8 micropores has resulted to superior activity. Finally, the epoxidation of various alkenes such as cyclohexene, 2-norbornene, α-pinene, styrene and 1-hexene under the optimized reaction condition, have been studied and the catalytic mechanism was also proposed. [Display omitted]