Gamma‐Ray Irradiation to Accelerate Crystallization of Mesoporous Zeolites
Xinqing Chen, Minghuang Qiu, Shenggang Li, Chengguang Yang, Lei Shi, Shiju Zhou, Gan Yu, Lixia Ge, Yu Xing, Ziyu Liu, Nannan Sun, Kun Zhang, Hui Wang, Mouhua Wang, Liangshu Zhong, Yuhan Sun
Abstract
Abstract Gamma‐ray (γ‐ray) irradiation was introduced into zeolite synthesis. The crystallization process of zeolite NaA, NaY, Silicalite‐1, and ZSM‐5 were greatly accelerated. The crystallization time of NaA zeolite was significantly decreased to 18 h under γ‐ray irradiation at 20 °C, while more than 102 h was needed for the conventional process. Unexpectedly, more mesopores were created during this process, and thus the adsorption capacity of CO 2 increased by 6‐fold compared to the NaA prepared without γ‐ray irradiation. Solid experimental evidence and density function theory (DFT) calculations demonstrated that hydroxyl free radicals (OH*) generated by γ‐rays accelerated the crystallization of zeolite NaA. Besides NaA, mesoporous ZSM‐5 with MFI topology was also successfully synthesized under γ‐ray irradiation, which possessed excellent catalytic performance for methanol conversion, suggesting the universality of this new synthetic strategy for various zeolites.