Nanocrystalline Zeolites: Synthesis, Mechanism, and Applications

Nanocrystalline zeolite particles are becoming an important material in many technical applications (e.g. zeolite membranes). Synthetic methods that minimize the zeolite crystal diameter, while providing a narrow particle size distribution, are of primary importance in these technical applications. However, there are several limitations to currently existing synthetic routes aimed at producing nanozeolites and zeolite membrane devices. For example, zeolite growth in these contexts typically requires days to weeks at high temperature to crystallize. Despite excellent performance of zeolite membranes in several separation applications, the long synthesis times required undermine any practical application of these technologies. This work focuses on chemical manipulation of zeolite nucleation processes in sol gel systems in effort to address such limitations. The primary findings indicate that careful control of the nucleation stage of a clear zeolite synthesis (optically transparent sol gel) allow the formation of zeolite Y nanocrystals less than 50 nm in diameter with a polydispersity index less than 0.2. Furthermore, chemical perturbations made during the nucleation stage of zeolite Y hydrogel synthesis is shown to accelerate crystal growth by a factor of 3-4, depending on the specific sol gel chemistry. These findings are applied to the nanocrystal seeding and rapid hydrothermal growth of zeolite Y membranes on inexpensive polymeric supports. A novel synthetic method is developed to this end. Also, the chemical and physical properties of monodisperse nanocrystalline zeolite Y synthesized herein are explored by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. It is found that the particle interface plays an important role in the ionic conductivity of nanocrystalline zeolites in contrast to their larger zeolite counterparts in analogy to other ceramic and metal oxide ion conductors. Finally, the possibility to produce novel organic and inorganic composite systems through zeolite host-guest chemistry is explored. A nanozeolite-silver nanoparticle host-guest system is synthesized and a mechanism describing its evolution is developed. Also, the photochemistry of a colloidal nanozeolite-organic dye host-guest system is explored with ultrafast transient UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. This allows some of the fastest chemical events to be probed within the host-guest system.