Designed synthesis of an extra-large pore zeolite with a 14-membered ring channel via supramolecular assembly templating approach

Abstract

Abstract Extra-large-pore zeolites are a class of important porous materials that have great potential in industrial applications as catalysts, adsorbents, etc. Organic structure directing agents (OSDAs) play a key role in the synthesis of extra-large pore zeolites. In this paper, we designed a cheap, easily available, aromatic OSDA to prepare an extra-large-pore zeolite (named as NUD-5) by using a supramolecular assembly templating (SAT) approach. NUD-5 has a zeolite framework with one-dimensional 14-member-ring pore channels, which is identical to UTD-1. The OSDA in NUD-5 can be completely removed by calcination and Al can also be directly incorporated into the NUD-5 framework during the synthesis, showing advantages over UTD-1. Al-NUD-5 possesses strong acidity and displayed good catalytic performance in the alkylation of benzene with methanol. Structural analysis of NUD-5 revealed that one-dimensional supramolecular assembles of OSDAs acted as a template for the formation of NUD-5, implying the SAT approach is a powerful preparative method to extra-large-pore zeolites.