Microporous crystalline materials preparation high-silica

To achieve a significant adsorptive capacity an adsorbent must have a high specific area, which implies a highly porous structure with very small micropores. Such microporous solids can be produced in several different ways. Adsorbents such as silica gel and activated alumina are made by precipitation of colloidal particles, followed by dehydration. Carbon adsorbents are prepared by controlled burn-out of carbonaceous materials such as coal, lignite, and coconut shells. The crystalline adsorbents (zeolite and zeolite analogues are different in that the dimensions of the micropores are determined by the crystal structure and there is therefore virtually no distribution of micropore size. Although structurally very different from the crystalline adsorbents, carbon molecular sieves also have a very narrow distribution of pore size. The adsorptive properties depend on the pore size and the pore size distribution as well as on the nature of the solid surface. 

Microporous solids with surface areas in the range of 400 m /g or larger can be prepared in several ways. Controlled thermal decomposition of silica gel or aluminum hydroxides to AIO(OH) and then to the 7- or r/-phases of alumina produces such high-surface-area materials. The so-called sol-gel method, which uses both aluminate and silicate ions or aluminum and silicon alkyl compounds at a well-controlled hydrogen ion concentration, produces crystalline microporous solids that... 

The higher the active surface area of the catalyst, the greater the number of product molecules produced per unit time. Therefore, much of the art and science of catalyst preparation deals with high-surface-area materials. Usually materials with 100- to 400-m /g surface area are prepared from alumina, silica, or carbon and more recently other oxides (Mg, Zr, Ti, V oxides), phosphates, sulfides, or carbonates have been used. These are prepared in such a way that they are often crystalline with well-defined microstructures and behave as active components of the catalyst system in spite of their accepted name supports. Transition-metal ions or atoms are then deposited in the micropores, which are then heated and reduced to produce small metal particles 10-10" A in size with virtually all the atoms located on the surface... 

The dimensions and accessibility of pores of zeohtes and microporous solids are confined to the subnanometer scale (<1.5 run), which hmits their applications when processing bulky molecules. Mesoporous materials with pore sizes ranging from 2 to 50 nm overcome these limitations. In contrast with microporous zeolites, these materials lack atomic ordering (crystallinity) in their silica walls as these are usually amorphous. The attractive properties of ordered mesoporous materials include well-defined pore system high surface area and pore sizes narrow pore size distribution tunable up to 100 nm existence of micropores in the amorphous wall (for thicker wall materials) existence of various wall (framework) compositions obtained from direct synthesis, or posttreatment or modification high thermal and hydrothermal stabilities if properly prepared or treated and various controllable regular morphologies on different scales from nanometers to micrometers. 

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