Constructing Hierarchical Porous Zeolites via Kinetic Regulation

Zeolites are crystalline inorganic solids with microporous structures, having widespread applications in the fields of catalysis, separation, adsorption, microelectronics, and medical diagnosis. A major drawback of zeolites is the mass transfer limitation due to the small size of the micropores (less than 1 nm). Numerous efforts have been dedicated to integrating mesopores with the microporous zeolite structures by using templating and/or destructive approaches. Here we provide a new strategy for hierarchical pore size zeolite synthesis, without using supramolecular or hard templates. The branching epitaxial growth behavior, as a result of aluminum-zoning, contributes to the formation of the hierarchical porous zeolite structures.This research was supported by the University of California Discovery Grant Program GCP08-128649 (to K.D. and G.D.S.) and the U.S. National Science Foundation CHE-1058835 (to K.D. and P.C.S.). A.C. thanks the program Severo Ochoa for financial support. J.A.M.-A. acknowledges the assistance of the CSIC for the award of a Postdoctoral JAE-Doc contract. This research made extensive usage of the Shared Experimental Facilities of the Materials Research Laboratory, which are supported by the MRSEC Program of the NSF under Award No. DMR 1121053; a member of the NSF-funded Materials Research Facilities Network (www.mrfn.org).Ding, K.; Corma Canós, A.; Maciá Agulló, JA.; Hu, JG.; Kraemer, S.; Stair, PC.; Stucky, GD. (2015). Constructing Hierarchical Porous Zeolites via Kinetic Regulation. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 137(35):11238-11241. doi:10.1021/jacs.5b06791S11238112411373