Hierarchical Samples Research Articles

Unravelling the Crucial of Spatial Al Distribution to Realize Precise Alkali‐Treatment for Target Acid‐Catalyzed Reactions

Constructing mesoporous structure within zeolites by alkali‐treatment is an effective protocol to improve their diffusion properties. However, undesirable changes in Brönsted acid site (BAS) densities always offset this advantage in acid‐catalyzed reactions. In this context, the crucial roles of spatial aluminum distribution were unraveled during alkali‐treatment of MFI zeolite and the desirable BAS density was achieved in obtained hierarchical samples for the target reactions. Various characterization methods, particularly the multiple one‐ and two‐dimensional magic‐angle‐spinning (MAS) NMR techniques, were performed to track the alkali‐treatment processes. For the sample with a more uniform spatial Al distribution, more tetrahedral Al sites would fall off and migrate around the Si‐OH in zeolite as Al(OH)4‐. Those re‐deposited Al(OH)4‐ sites were easily transformed into NMR‐invisible Al sites during the calcination process, which contributed negligibly to both Brönsted and Lewis acidities, thus being referred to“acid‐free”Al species. While most tetrahedral Al sites were preserved after the alkali‐treatment of sample with non‐uniform Al distribution and the BAS density gradually increased with treatment time. According to the requirements of typical acid‐catalyzed reactions, such as catalytic cracking of 1,3,5‐triisopropylbenzene and methanol‐to‐olefins, the desired hierarchical zeolite catalysts were developed by matching the amounts of extracted Si and generated“acid‐free”Al during the precise alkali‐treatment.

Unravelling the Crucial of Spatial Al Distribution to Realize Precise Alkali-Treatment for Target Acid-Catalyzed Reactions.

Constructing mesoporous structure within zeolites by alkali-treatment is an effective protocol to improve their diffusion properties. However, undesirable changes in Brönsted acid site (BAS) densities always offset this advantage in acid-catalyzed reactions. In this context, the crucial roles of spatial aluminumdistribution were unraveled during alkali-treatment of MFI zeolite and the desirable BAS density was achieved in obtained hierarchical samples for the target reactions. Various characterization methods, particularly the multiple one- and two-dimensional magic-angle-spinning (MAS) NMR techniques, were performed to track the alkali-treatment processes. For the sample with a more uniform spatial Al distribution, more tetrahedral Al sites would fall off and migrate around the Si-OH in zeolite as Al(OH)4-. Those re-deposited Al(OH)4- sites were easily transformed into NMR-invisible Al sites during the calcination process, which contributed negligibly to both Brönsted and Lewis acidities, thus being referred to"acid-free"Al species. While most tetrahedral Al sites were preserved after the alkali-treatment of sample with non-uniform Al distribution and the BAS density gradually increased with treatment time. According to the requirements of typical acid-catalyzed reactions, such as catalytic cracking of 1,3,5-triisopropylbenzene and methanol-to-olefins, the desired hierarchical zeolite catalysts were developed by matching the amounts of extracted Si and generated"acid-free"Al during the precise alkali-treatment.

Effects of structural hierarchy and size on mechanical behavior of nanoporous gold

Nanoporous gold with a hierarchical structure has prospects as an advanced functional material with enhanced mechanical properties, but how the hierarchical structure affects its mechanical properties compared to a unimodal structure has not been revealed. Here, we investigate the mechanical behavior of hierarchically-structured nanoporous gold and unimodally-structured nanoporous gold with the same relative density by micropillar compressive tests in dry and electrolyte environment. The ligament size at the upper-level structure in hierarchically-structured nanoporous gold and the ligament size in unimodally-structured nanoporous gold are kept similar, while having hierarchically-structured samples with ligament sizes of 10 to 50 nm at lower-level structure. We find that hierarchically-structured nanoporous gold shows greater compressive strength and pronounced stress-variation by oxidization of the surface compared to unimodally-structured nanoporous gold. A ligament-size dependency on the lower-level structure in hierarchical samples is observed, with compressive strength and stress variation by surface oxidation increasing as the lower-level ligament size decreases. Three-dimensionally reconstructed structure analysis suggests that the enhanced mechanical properties of hierarchically-structured nanoporous gold are attributed to the better-connected network of ligaments originating from two separated dealloying-coarsening procedures. The influence of dislocation activities depending on characteristic sizes is also discussed to elucidate the distinguished mechanical behavior.

Hepatocellular Carcinoma Epigenetic Patterns Correspond to Differences in Ethnoracial Status and Treatment Response in a Single-Center Retrospective Study

PurposeTo correlate epigenetic patterns with ethnoracial status and locoregional therapy (LRT) response in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Materials and MethodsDNA and RNA were extracted from 47 distinct formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumor samples from 42 patients with HCC (n = 14 Black, n = 19 White, n = 9 Hispanic). LRT response was determined using computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) imaging 3 months posttreatment of 35 tumors (n = 22 complete response, n = 13 retreatment candidates). RNA expression and DNA methylation were used to stratify patients by ethnoracial status and treatment response using partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Results were validated using hierarchical clustering. Ingenuity pathway analysis was performed to identify upstream regulators and pathways. ResultsPLS-DA identified 100 genes and 12 methylated regions that differentiated tumors from Black from White/Hispanic patients. Hierarchical clustering clustered samples with the top 16 genes or the top 5 methylation regions. Dysregulated pathways included adrenomedullin pathway (P = .030), EIF2 signaling (P = .007), and several metabolic pathways. AGTR1 (log2fold = 1.59) and GSTM3 (log2fold = 2.53) represented potential differentially expressed therapeutic targets. PLS-DA identified 100 genes and 150 methylation regions that differentiated between complete responders and retreatment candidates. Hierarchical clustering clustered samples with the top 30 genes or the top 13 methylation regions. Dysregulated pathways included metabolic and DNA repair–related pathways. ASAP2 (log2fold = 0.29) and RAD50 (log2fold = 0.22) represented potential differentially expressed therapeutic targets. ConclusionsVariation in gene expression and DNA methylation patterns in patients with HCC corresponded to ethnoracial status and LRT response. These initial results suggest tumor profiling has the potential to close ethnoracial disparities and improve treatment stratification.

Neighboring Envelope Embedded Stacked Autoencoder for Deep Learning on Hierarchically Structured Samples

A stacked autoencoder (SAE) is a widely used deep network. However, existing deep SAEs focus on original samples without considering the hierarchical structural information between samples. This limits the accuracy of the SAE. In recent years, state-of-the-art SAEs have suggested improvements in network structure, cost function, parameter optimization, and thereby the accuracy has been enhanced. However, the problem mentioned above is still not solved. Therefore, this paper is concerned with how to design a SAE that can conduct deep learning on hierarchically structured samples. This proposed SAE - neighboring envelope embedded stacked autoencoder (NE_ESAE) mainly consists of two parts. The first is the neighboring sample envelope learning mechanism (NSELM) that constructs sample-pairs by combining neighboring samples. In addition, the NSELM constructs multilayer sample spaces by multilayer iterative mean clustering, which considers similar samples and generates layers of envelope samples with hierarchical structural information. The second is an embedded stacked autoencoder (ESAE) to consider the original samples during training and in network structure, thereby finding the relationship of the samples with original features and deep features in a better manner. The experimental results show that our method has significantly better performance than some representative methods. Different from existing SAEs, the proposed NE_ESAE realizes deep learning on hierarchical structured samples, and makes SAE able to conduct cooperative deep sample and feature learning. The advantage that has been gained can be applied to other deep neural networks.

Hierarchical-Instance Contrastive Learning for Minority Detection on Imbalanced Medical Datasets.

Deep learning methods are often hampered by issues such as data imbalance and data-hungry. In medical imaging, malignant or rare diseases are frequently of minority classes in the dataset, featured by diversified distribution. Besides that, insufficient labels and unseen cases also present conundrums for training on the minority classes. To confront the stated problems, we propose a novel Hierarchical-instance Contrastive Learning (HCLe) method for minority detection by only involving data from the majority class in the training stage. To tackle inconsistent intra-class distribution in majority classes, our method introduces two branches, where the first branch employs an auto-encoder network augmented with three constraint functions to effectively extract image-level features, and the second branch designs a novel contrastive learning network by taking into account the consistency of features among hierarchical samples from majority classes. The proposed method is further refined with a diverse mini-batch strategy, enabling the identification of minority classes under multiple conditions. Extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the proposed method on three datasets of different diseases and modalities. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.

The effects of growth modifiers on the catalytic performance of hierarchical Pd/ZSM-23 bifunctional catalysts for n-hexadecane hydroisomerization

Hydroisomerization of n-alkanes catalyzed by metal-zeolite bifunctional catalysts is an important process to produce clean biofuels. The employment of appropriate growth modifiers during the synthesis of hierarchical zeolites to increase the iso-alkane yield has captured much attention. In this work, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and polydiallyl dimethyl ammonium chloride (PDDA), representatives of cationic surfactants and cationic polyelectrolytes, are added to the initial gel to one-pot synthesize hierarchical ZSM-23 zeolites (Z23-xPC and Z23-yPP) via the bottom-up strategy. The corresponding Pd/ZSM-23 catalysts are prepared by loading 0.5 wt% Pd on microporous and hierarchical ZSM-23 and tested for the hydroisomerization of n-hexadecane. Due to the cationic adsorption of CTAB or steric hindrance effect of PDDA, Z23-xPC and Z23-yPP samples all demonstrate enhanced mesoporosity compared with the conventional microporous Z23-P sample. The diffusivity experiments indicates that the D/L2 values decrease in the order of Pd/Z23-5PP > Pd/Z23-3PC > Pd/Z23-P, suggesting that the hydrocarbons diffusion in the channel of hierarchical ZSM-23 samples is evidently improved. In addition, the Brønsted acid densities of the Z23-xPC and Z23-yPP samples are also evidently reduced compared to that of the microporous Z23-P sample because of the proportion decreases of framework Al atoms at T2-T5 sites. Compared with the microporous Pd/Z23-P catalyst, the appropriate addition amount of growth modifiers can evidently improve the yield of iso-hexadecane products and limit the cracking process. Especially for the Pd/Z23-5PP catalyst, the cracking process is effectively limited and the maximum iso-hexadecane yield of 75.4% is obtained at an n-hexadecane conversion of 88.8% at 290 °C, which is the highest among all catalysts. Therefore, this work has provided an effective method for the simple preparation of bifunctional catalysts with improved diffusion performance and more favorable metal–acid balance.

MOGNO, the nano and microtomography beamline at Sirius, the Brazilian synchrotron light source

The MOGNO beamline is a high-energy imaging beamline dedicated to in situ and operando experiments in heterogeneous and hierarchical samples, and one of the beamlines of the first phase of SIRIUS, the 4th generation storage ring at the LNLS. The beamline is currently under commissioning and will operate at energies of 21.5, 39.0 and 67.7 keV, using as primary source a 3.2T permanent magnet dipole, with critical energy of 19.15 keV. The beam is demagnified down to a nanometric focal spot (≈120 nm) using a set of three elliptical mirrors, which introduces a divergence and, hence, the beamline operates in a cone beam geometry with variable field-of-view (FoV between 150 µm to 85 mm) and spatial resolution (≈120 nm to 55 |am). These conditions are reached with two end-stations, the nanotomography and the microtomography stations. A high-Z photon counting detector, with detection area of ≈85 x 85 mm2, will serve for both the nano and micro-station, but the beamline will also count on an indirect detection system based on a sCMOS camera and a macroscope.

Superconductivity in Hierarchical 3D Nanostructured Pb–In Alloys

The superconducting properties of hierarchical nanostructured samples of Pb–In alloys have been studied by the measurement of dynamic susceptibility χ(T) temperature dependence. Symmetric samples with different shapes and sizes were formed on a brass metallic net by cathode-metal electrodeposition with a programmed pulsing current. Two different kinds of χ(T) dependence were observed in synthesized structures. The first kind was a broad superconductive transition without energy dissipation with a very weak response to the external magnetic field. The second kind was, conversely, an abrupt transition signifying an energy dissipation with a significant field response. This behavior depends on the ratio between a superconducting domain size (defined by the London penetration depth λ) and a crystallite size. In these cases, one or several superconducting domains are present in a sample. This result paves the way to controlling a superconducting domain size in materials with the parameters of a pulsed current.

Interactive augmented reality storytelling guided by scene semantics

We present a novel interactive augmented reality (AR) storytelling approach guided by indoor scene semantics. Our approach automatically populates virtual contents in real-world environments to deliver AR stories, which match both the story plots and scene semantics. During the storytelling process, a player can participate as a character in the story. Meanwhile, the behaviors of the virtual characters and the placement of the virtual items adapt to the player's actions. An input raw story is represented as a sequence of events, which contain high-level descriptions of the characters' states, and is converted into a graph representation with automatically supplemented low-level spatial details. Our hierarchical story sampling approach samples realistic character behaviors that fit the story contexts through optimizations; and an animator, which estimates and prioritizes the player's actions, animates the virtual characters to tell the story in AR. Through experiments and a user study, we validated the effectiveness of our approach for AR storytelling in different environments.

Controlled synthesis of hierarchically porous SAPO-34 zeolites with tailored crystal size and morphology

A series of hierarchically porous SAPO-34 zeolites with tunable crystal sizes varying from 40 to 200 nm were synthesized with different morphologies from well-dispersed ultra-small nanocrystals to compact spherical-like polycrystalline aggregates by only changing the Si/TEAOH (TEAOH: tetraethylammonium hydroxide) molar ratios in the gel precursors without using any meso-templates. The hierarchical samples were systematically characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM, TEM, XRF, 29Si MAS NMR spectra and N2 adsorption–desorption. It reveals that hierarchical SAPO-34 nanocrystals with high crystallinities, larger external surface areas (61 – 125 m2/g) and mesopore volumes (0.15 – 0.29 cm3/g) were obtained under current synthesis condition.

Synthesis of hierarchically porous zeolite TS-1 with small crystal size and its performance of 1-hexene epoxidation reaction

TS-1 is a typical microporous zeolite, which is hindering the timely diffusion of reaction products and is likely to cause secondary side reactions in heterogeneous catalytic reaction due to the micropore size. However, zeolite TS-1 with hierarchical pores of micropores and mesoporous/macropores can solve this problem to a great extent. In view of this, hierarchical zeolite TS-1 is synthesized by using tetrapropylammonium hydroxide (TPAOH) as structure directing agent and polyacrylamide (PAM) as a hierarchical pore-directing template. The texture property of hierarchical TS-1 can be optimized by changing the amount of PAM in the synthesis gel. With the increase of PAM content, the pore volume and specific surface area of the hierarchical zeolite TS-1 increases. Compared with the conventional TS-1, the hierarchical TS-1 samples have obvious pore size distribution in the range of 20–80 nm. It is interesting that the particle size of TS-1 decreases after adding PAM. When the hierarchical TS-1 is applied to the epoxidation reaction of 1-hexene with H 2 O 2 , the selectivity of the desired product 1,2-epoxyhexane is significantly increased. • Hierarchical zeolite TS-1 with small crystal size has been synthesized by using PAM as template. • The texture property of hierarchical TS-1 can be controlled by changing the amount of PAM. • The selectivity of 1,2-epoxyhexane was greatly improved in 1-hexene epoxidation with H 2 O 2 catalyzed by hierarchical TS-1.

Porosity roles of micro-mesostructured ZSM-5 in catalytic fast pyrolysis of cellulolytic enzyme lignin for aromatics

Cellulolytic enzyme lignin could be utilized to produce aromatic-rich bio-oil in the catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) process, in which strong-acidic ZSM-5 is often used as the catalyst. The introduction of mesopores into conventional ZSM-5 catalysts can improve the diffusion of heavy components and thus enable the modulation of pyrolysis products. To investigate the effect of mesoporous structure parameters on the diffusion of heavy phenols and the regulation of pyrolysis products by different types of pore structures, three different mesoporous ZSM-5 were prepared (core-shell, hierarchical, composites), with textural properties being compared in detail. The structural parameters were adopted to analyze the relationship between mesopores distribution and catalytic performance, revealing the significant effect of equivalent mesopore size. Among the prepared catalysts, a micro-mesostructured composite zeolite (ZMA) with internal hierarchical pores and ununiform mesolayer shell had a suitable mesostructure, of which the interconnected meso-channels improved the accessibility of inner acidic sites. Also, it was optimum to balance aromatic yield (above 7.5 wt%) and the product distribution (MAHs/PAHs approaching 6), revealing that its moderate equivalent pore size maintained a certain shape-selectivity to suppress PAHs formation. It was further shown that the applicable catalyst to lignin ratio (C/L) ranges differed with various mesostructures, as ZMA and hierarchical samples were suitable for higher and lower ratios, respectively.

Ultra-high specific surface area porous carbon derived from chestnut for high-performance supercapacitor

The preparation of biomass-derived porous carbon having a high specific surface area for high-performance supercapacitors has been recognised as an important research topic in the past decade. In this study, chestnut-pulp-derived porous carbon is prepared by employing a two-step process involving carbonisation and KOH chemical activation for the first time. The synthesized hierarchical porous carbon samples have an ultra-high specific surface area of 2646 m2 g−1 and good conductivity, and their O-doping can be controlled. They exhibit excellent electrochemical performance as carbon electrodes owing to the synergistic effects of their advantageous features. In a three-electrode system, the as-obtained electrode yields a high specific capacitance of 373 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1 in 6 M KOH electrolyte. Furthermore, it exhibits excellent rate performance with ~70.8% capacity retention when the discharge current increases from 1 to 10 A g−1 and prominent cycling stability with ~99.7% capacity retention after 10000 cycles. These values indicate that chestnut-pulp-based carbon materials have excellent electrochemical properties when used as supercapacitor electrodes and may promote the large-scale application of 3D porous carbons in energy storage.

A systematic preparation mechanism for directional regulation of pore structure in activated carbon including specific surface area and pore hierarchy

Currently, the simultaneous and directional regulation of specific surface area (SBET) and pore hierarchy (the percentage of mesoporous and macroporous volume to total pore volume, Vmes+mac/Vt) of activated carbon (AC) lacks a systematic preparation mechanism. In this study, AC samples were prepared from coconut husks, and the effect of carbonization methods, activation methods, and process parameters on the development of the pore structure were explored. N2 adsorption–desorption results indicated that AC samples prepared via conventional carbonization were microporous. Hierarchical AC samples were obtained by the combination of hydrothermal carbonization at 240 °C and physical activation. CaCl2 impregnation was found to be beneficial to the preparation of meso-/macroporous AC samples. Based on these results, a series of AC samples with typically varied pore hierarchies (18.05–76.73 %) with similar specific surface areas (∼450.0 m2 g−1) were obtained. AC samples with similar pore hierarchies and different specific surface areas were also prepared, including microporous AC (SBET: 330.5–761.4 m2 g−1; Vmes+mac/Vt: 12.21–14.06 %), hierarchical AC (SBET: 445.9–780.7 m2 g−1; Vmes+mac/Vt: 51.04–54.89 %), and meso-/macroporous AC samples (SBET: 371.1–516.0 m2 g−1; Vmes+mac/Vt: 67.39–75.25 %). A systematic preparation mechanism for the directional regulation of the pore structure of AC is proposed, which is significant for the preparation of high-efficiency AC for different applications.

Friedel-Crafts acylation reaction over hierarchical Y zeolite modified through surfactant mediated technology

Friedel-Crafts acylation reaction was studied under mild conditions using hierarchical HY zeolite samples prepared through surfactant mediated technology, in the presence of NH4OH, using CTAB or DTAB as surfactants and changing the duration of treatment from 6 to 48 h. The materials were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, low temperature N2 adsorption isotherms, SEM microscopy and pyridine adsorption followed by FTIR. The catalytic behaviour was studied in the acylation of furan by acetic anhydride. The catalytic results reflect the role of the duration of the treatment as well as the surfactant molecule used. As the time of treatment increases, the enlargement of the pores leads to an increase of the rate constant and turnover frequency (TOF), except for sample modified during longer time, 48 h, due to the occurrence of secondary reactions that produce larger products or reaction intermediates that become trapped inside the pores. The role of the surfactant molecule is also relevant since the sample modified in the presence of the larger surfactant molecule, CTAB, a significant increase in product yield and rate constant is obtained when compared with the sample prepared in the same conditions using DTAB. However, in that case, by prolonging the treatment a substantial decrease in the same parameters occurs due to the occurrence of deactivation phenomena, pointing out that the optimized modification of porosity needs to be customized according to the needs of each catalytic system.

Recent Progress in Synthesis and Application of Nanosized and Hierarchical Mordenite—A Short Review

Zeolites with their unique properties find applications in various fields, including medicine, agronomy, ecology, production of detergents and drying agents, and in a number of industrial processes. Among zeolites, mordenite is particularly widespread because of its high silica/alumina ratio, which allows it to resist exposure to high temperatures and to acidic gases and liquids. Mordenite is commercially available as a natural mineral and as a synthesized material. This zeolite is mostly used in its synthetic form as an acid catalyst in the petrochemical industry for the isomerization of alkanes and aromatics. In this review, we consider the scientific literature on the structure, synthesis, and two main types of modifications that solve the diffusion difficulties during catalytic processes. The first type of modifications is related to a reduction of the size of the mordenite crystals obtained to submicron or nanometric range, whereas the second ones aim to obtain hierarchical mordenite samples by appropriate post-synthetic treatments. Both types of modifications find many other applications besides solving diffusion constraints in catalytic processes. Attempts to fine-tune and control the particle size in the first type of modifications or the pore size in the second ones by adjusting various parameters during the synthesis are described.

Selective propylene epoxidation by low cost microporous/mesoporous hierarchical Titanium silicalite-1

TS-1 (Titanium silicalite-1) with micro/mesoporous hierarchical framework with regular pores diameter of 3–5 nm has been produced efficiency in a low molar ratio of tetrapropyl ammonium hydroxide/silica (TPAOH/SiO2) by utilizing tetraethyl silicate-40 (TES) as silica source under hydrothermal conditions. For reducing the cost of TS-1 production, TPAOH/SiO2 molar ratio decreased to 0.08 in the presence of non-ionic surfactant. Furthermore, cheaper TES is used instead of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), which is normally used for industrial synthesis of TS-1. The resulting samples are characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, FT-IR, UV–Vis spectroscopy and N2 adsorption–desorption. The preparation condition is greatly influenced on TS-1 textural features, particle size, morphology and coordination of titanium species in the structure. Hierarchical TS-1 samples were utilized as catalysts in the propylene epoxidation with hydrogen peroxide in methanol. The catalytic activity was compared with the conventional TS-1.

Intestinal Tract Microbe Communities Associated with Horseshoe Crabs from Beibu Gulf, China.

Until now, there has been little research on the intestinal microbial community of horseshoe crabs. To fill this gap, we investigated the microbiome composition of the Chinese horseshoe crab, Tachypleus tridentatus, and the mangrove horseshoe crab, Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda. We sequenced the 16S rRNA gene of intestinal bacterial species and compared the microbial community structure and diversity. Next, we show that the total effective bacterial sequence was 36,865 reads, and the average annotated operational taxonomic unit (OTU) number was 240. Through hierarchical clustering analysis and principal coordinate analysis samples from two horseshoe crab species, we found that the intestinal flora of the same horseshoe crab species was relatively concentrated, while the microbiome of a different horseshoe crab species were significantly separated. Cluster analysis showed that two samples, one from Chinese horseshoe crabs and one from mangrove horseshoe crabs, had similar microbial community structure, while other samples were relatively discrete. The gut microbiota of the mangrove horseshoe crab were dominated by the phyla Tenericutes (42.71%), Firmicutes (24.27%), and Proteobacteria (20.39%), while the top three phyla in the Chinese horseshoe crab intestinal tract were Tenericutes (57.19%), Proteobacteria (22.14%), and Bacteroidetes (7.38%). To intuitively understand the similarity and overlap of the OTU composition of each group, we performed Venn diagram analysis. The two species shared 284 OTUs, accounting for 81.8% of the total. This indicates that although there is high similarity between mangrove and Chinese horseshoe crab in gastrointestinal microbial community structure, there are also some differences, which deserve further discussion.

Fe@Hierarchical BEA Zeolite Catalyst for MW-Assisted Alcohol Oxidation Reaction: A Greener Approach

The aim of this study was to investigate the catalytic activity of hybrid materials of iron supported on hierarchical zeolites in the oxidation reaction of 1-phenylethanol to acetophenone. A greener approach was considered for the preparation of the catalyst and performance of the oxidation reaction. Hierarchical BEA zeolite samples were obtained from an alkaline and a subsequent acid treatment. The materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and nitrogen adsorption at −196 °C. An iron salt was incorporated onto the hierarchical zeolites by mechanochemical grinding and the catalytic performance of the prepared materials was evaluated towards the microwave assisted oxidation reaction of 1-phenylethanol. The catalyst obtained by Fe immobilization on sample modified by 0.2 M NaOH followed by acid treatment (Fe@BEA0.2AT) is the most promising material with 35% yield and 56% selectivity to acetophenone, allowing five reuse cycles without significant loss of activity and selectivity.