Template free facile synthesis of mesoporous mordenite for bulky molecular catalytic reactions

Abstract

The synthesis of highly stable mesoporous zeolites is one of the great challenges in materials science. Soft and hard templating methods have widely been applied to synthesize mesoporous zeolites having different pore diameters and structures. Here, we report a facile and template free hydrothermal synthesis of mesoporous mordenite (MOR) by controlling synthesis conditions. The small nanoparticles of similar to 50-80 nm were self-assembled into 2-3 mu m MOR. Intracrystalline mesopores of similar to 3-5 nm were abundantly observed throughout the MOR nanoparticles. Synthesized mesoporous MOR demonstrated significantly improved catalytic efficiencies (similar to 100%), 3-5 times higher than its conventional counterparts (CBV IOA and CBV 21).