Recent trends in the synthesis of molecular sieves

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This chapter highlights the recent trends in the synthesis of molecular sieves. Zeolite-based molecular sieves represent one of the most important groups of inorganic materials with an extremely high impact on industrial applications as adsorbents, ion-exchangers, and catalysts. The number of applications of zeolites as highly active, selective, and stable catalysts in large-scale technologies has steadily increased, including oil refinery, petrochemistry, production of fine chemicals, and environmental catalysis. Recently, several new zeolite structures have been reported consisting of 14-membered rings, bi-directional intersecting 14- and 12-membered rings, and even 18-membered rings. The variety of the synthetic procedures and the differences in their textural properties—because of the different synthetic procedures and high temperature treatment—provide evidence that mesoporous molecular sieves of different chemical compositions are interesting materials as heterogeneous catalysts. The first successful preparation of micro/mesoporous or micro/macroporous molecular sieves as well as mesoporous zeolite single crystals started an intensive search of optimization procedures for their synthesis to increase their thermal stability and to tailor their acid, base, and redox properties for possible applications in heterogeneous catalysis.