Highly active and stable catalysts for hydrogenation of dimethyl oxalate (DMO) to methyl glycolate (MG) were desirable but highly challengeable. In this study, a kind of immobilized Ru based catalyst for the hydrogenation of DMO has been developed. The catalyst was synthesized by covalently bonding a ruthenium complex onto the modified-SiO2 surface, which was modified by 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (KH550), through coordination interaction with aminosilane ligands. Compared with the traditional Ru/SiO2 catalyst, the immobilized Ru-NH2-SiO2 catalyst exhibits significantly enhanced catalytic performance and high stability towards hydrogenation of dimethyl oxalate to MG at temperatures as low as 80 degrees C. The yield of MG was 86.8% over Ru-NH2-SiO2 catalyst, while the yield of MG was only 34.5% over Ru/SiO2 catalyst. A series of characterization revealed that the excellent catalytic performance of Ru-NH2-SiO2 was resulted from the superior dispersion of Ru NPs on the surface of support and the electron-rich state of Ru centers. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.