The dehydration of 2-picolinamide to produce 2-cyanopyridine was investigated thoroughly using silica supported potassium oxide as a heterogeneous catalyst. Both large specific surface area and pore size of SiO_2 (B) contributed to the favorable catalytic performance for the synthesis of 2-CP. In addition, the yield of 2-CP showed the linear relationship with the amounts of medium basicity of the catalysts,demonstrating that medium basic sites were the active sites of silica supported potassium oxide catalysts. The catalysts were further characterized by XRD and FT-IR to clarify the active species. The results indicated the Si—O—K group produced by the reaction of K_2CO_3 with Si—OH was the active species, which was further evidenced by the adjustment of the amount of Si—OH by silylation and hydroxylation procedure.
The novel coordination structures of europium and terbium chloride-picolinamide complexes （EuCl3-（C6H6N2O）2.5H2O, Eu-pa and TbCl3.（C6H6N2O）2.5H2O, Tb-pa） are reported. The crystal structures in the solid state are characterized by X-ray single crystal diffraction, FTIR, Raman, FIR, THz and luminescence spectroscopy. In the crystal structures, the pyridyl nitrogen and carbonyl oxygen atoms in picolinamide are coordinated to the metal ions to form a five-membered ring structure. The experimental results indicate the similar coordination structures of Eu and Tb-pa complexes and the changes of hydrogen bonds and conformation provide models for the coordination structures of the ligands induced by complexation. The results of lanthanide ions with ligands having amide groups.
