Self-Assembly of Cetyltrimethylammonium Bromide and Lamellar Zeolite Precursor for the Preparation of Hierarchical MWW Zeolite

Abstract

Construction of hierarchical zeolite catalysts from lamellar zeolite precursor is challenging and promising for industrial catalysis. Although numerous efforts have been dedicated to control the organization of zeolite nanosheets by postsynthetic approaches or employing complex surfactants in hydrothermal synthesis, there is still no successful case that the hierarchical lamellar zeolite is hydrothermally synthesized by the self-assembly of the commercially available simple surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and inorganic zeolite precursor. In traditional syntheses, the self-assembly of simple surfactants and the growth of microporous framework are hardly compatible from both thermodynamic and kinetic viewpoints, preferring to cause phase separation. Herein, we approach for the first time the hydrothermal synthesis of a mesostructured multilamellar zeolite ECNU-7P, consisting of an alternative stacking of inorganic MWW zeolite nanosheets and organic CTAB layers with large interlayer spacing ...