Hard Templating by Carbon Materials

3 Hard Templating by Carbon Materials The work on carbon templating by Jacobsen and coworkers [156] has stimulated dramatic growth in the synthesis of mesoporous/hierarchical zeolites. This approach uses an excess of zeolite gel inside an inert, mesoporous carbon matrix, wherein the zeohte grows over and 

However, one of the limitations of the method is the availability of adequate carbon templates to obtain the desired mesoporous structures. Accordingly, a 

Other carbon sources have also been used as matrices such as multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWNTs), which led to narrower mesopore distributions than with carbon black pearls. In addition, the use of carbon fibers also allowed cylindrical mesopores to be obtained with low tortuosity. Carbon aerogel monoliths, obtained from resorcinol-formaldehyde gels after drying with COj under supercritical conditions and pyrolysis under nitrogen atmosphere at 1323 K, have also been used as templates for the generation of mesoporosity in zeolites [158]. This method presents the added advantage that the mesoporous zeolite can be synthesized as a monolith. 

Ordered mesoporous carbons, prepared by nanocasting, have also been used successfully as templates for the synthesis of hierarchical zeolites [159, 160). This is the case of CMK-3, an ordered mesoporous carbon attained by nanoreplication of pure silica SBA-15. The hierarchical zeolites obtained by employing CMK-3 as a template mainly present supermicropores or small mesopores with a size around 2 nm. The textural properties of the hierarchical zeohtes can be tuned by changing the type of CMK-3 carbon used. A modification of this method consists of directly impregnating the composite SBA-15-carbon or MCM-41-carbon with TPAOH and leaving the mixture crystallizing hydrothermally under steam. After calcination, a mesoporous ZSM-5 is formed with mesopore sizes around 3.5 and 

Carbon templating offers many possibilities for the synthesis of hierarchical zeolites because of the large availabihty of carbon materials that can be employed. 

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