(614a) Electrochemically Accelerated Zeolite Crystallization

Zeolites are crystalline aluminosilicates with a microporous structure containing uniform nanometer scale cages and channels. This unique shape and surface-selective properties provide sites with strong acidity, redox sites, and molecular sieving. These properties have made zeolites valuable in several industries and have been used as catalysts in the petrochemical and chemical industries, adsorbents, and as membranes for vapor phase separations. These materials have also been studied for applications towards electronics, chemical sensors, and medicine. Zeolite crystallization involves the assembly of negatively charged, tetrahedrally coordinated silicon and aluminum species around positively charged template molecules, catalyzed by negatively charged hydroxides. Traditionally, this process occurs under hydrothermal conditions, requiring a transit time (i.e., heat-up and cool-down) of at least several hours, while the minimum residence time for crystallization ranges from hours to days. This talk discusses a novel electrochemical approach enabling accelerated zeolite crystallization. The crystallization kinetics depend on the temperature, current density and the precursor composition. Electrochemical assisted synthesis is a simple, scalable approach to synthesize zeolites with high space time yields for diverse zeolite framework structures.