Zeolites-microporous crystalline aluminosilicates-are widely used in petrochemistry and fine-chemical synthesis because strong acid sites within their uniform micropores enable size- and shape-selective catalysis. But the very presence of the micropores, with aperture diameters below 1 nm, often goes hand-in-hand with diffusion limitations that adversely affect catalytic activity. The problem can be overcome by reducing the thickness of the zeolite crystals, which reduces diffusion path lengths and thus improves molecular diffusion. This has been realized by synthesizing zeolite nanocrystals, by exfoliating layered zeolites, and by introducing mesopores in the microporous material through templating strategies or demetallation processes. But except for the exfoliation, none of these strategies has produced 'ultrathin' zeolites with thicknesses below 5 nm. Here we show that appropriately designed bifunctional surfactants can direct the formation of zeolite structures on the mesoporous and microporous length scales simultaneously and thus yield MFI (ZSM-5, one of the most important catalysts in the petrochemical industry) zeolite nanosheets that are only 2 nm thick, which corresponds to the b-axis dimension of a single MFI unit cell. The large number of acid sites on the external surface of these zeolites renders them highly active for the catalytic conversion of large organic molecules, and the reduced crystal thickness facilitates diffusion and thereby dramatically suppresses catalyst deactivation through coke deposition during methanol-to-gasoline conversion. We expect that our synthesis approach could be applied to other zeolites to improve their performance in a range of important catalytic applications.

Zeolites are a family of crystalline aluminosilicate materials widely used as shape-selective catalysts, ion exchange materials, and adsorbents for organic compounds. In the present work, zeolites were synthesized by adding a rationally designed amphiphilic organosilane surfactant to conventional alkaline zeolite synthesis mixtures. The zeolite products were characterized by a complementary combination of X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen sorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The analyses show that the present method is suitable as a direct synthesis route to highly mesoporous zeolites. The mesopore diameters could be uniformly tailored, similar to ordered mesoporous silica with amorphous frameworks. The mesoporous zeolite exhibited a narrow, small-angle XRD peak, which is characteristic of the short-range correlation between mesopores, similar to disordered wormhole-like mesoporous materials. The XRD patterns and electron micrographs of the samples taken during crystallization clearly showed the evolution of the mesoporous structure concomitantly to the crystallization of zeolite frameworks. The synthesis of the crystalline aluminosilicate materials with tunable mesoporosity and strong acidity has potentially important technological implications for catalytic reactions of large molecules, whereas conventional mesoporous materials lack hydrothermal stability and acidity.

Maximum atom efficiency as well as distinct chemoselectivity is expected for electrocatalysis on atomically dispersed (or single site) metal centres, but its realization remains challenging so far, because carbon, as the most widely used electrocatalyst support, cannot effectively stabilize them. Here we report that a sulfur-doped zeolite-templated carbon, simultaneously exhibiting large sulfur content (17 wt% S), as well as a unique carbon structure (that is, highly curved three-dimensional networks of graphene nanoribbons), can stabilize a relatively high loading of platinum (5 wt%) in the form of highly dispersed species including site isolated atoms. In the oxygen reduction reaction, this catalyst does not follow a conventional four-electron pathway producing H2O, but selectively produces H2O2 even over extended times without significant degradation of the activity. Thus, this approach constitutes a potentially promising route for producing important fine chemical H2O2, and also offers opportunities for tuning the selectivity of other electrochemical reactions on various metal catalysts.

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Zeolite MFI nanosheets of 2-nm thickness have been hydrothermally synthesized via cooperative assembly between silica and an organic surfactant, which is functionalized with a diquaternary ammonium group. The zeolite nanosheets have been further assembled into their ordered multilamellar mesostructure through hydrophobic interactions between the surfactant tails located outside the zeolite nanosheet. This assembly process involves successive transformations from an initially hexagonal mesophase to a multilamellar mesophase without crystallinity and then to a lamellar mesophase with a crystalline zeolite framework. The mesopore volume in the interlamellar space could be retained by supporting the zeolite nanosheets with silica pillars, as in pillared clays, even after surfactant removal by calcination. The mesopore diameters could be controlled according to the surfactant tail lengths. Due to the interlamellar structural coherence, the hierarchically mesoporous/microporous zeolite could exhibit small-angle X-ray diffraction peaks up to the fourth-order reflections corresponding to the interlayer distance. In addition, an Ar adsorption analysis and transmission electron microscopic investigation indicated that the pillars were highly likely to be built with an MFI structure. The present approach using a zeolite structure-directing functional group contained in a surfactant would be suitable for the synthesis of other related nanomorphous zeolites in the future.