Development of electron microscopy towards nano-structured porous materials : Focus on novel zeolites from layered silicates and chiral mesoporous nanotubes

Sammanfattning: Three novel zeolites (M-IEZ-MWW, IEZ-FER and IEZ-CDO) have been successfully synthesised from the corresponding precursors. Structure characterisation of those materials was conducted by TEM. Our studies show that the structure of the new zeolites keeps identical layer to the corresponding known 3D zeolite, except for the distinct expansion of the layer spacing. Combining with results from XRD, N2 adsorption, IR and NMR, the expansion can be explained by the pillaring of T sites between the layers. Meanwhile, the intergrowth of 3D MWW and IEZ-MWW was observed in the Al-IEZ-MWW and Si-IEZ-MWW crystals, IEZ-CDO structure was found in the IEZ-FER crystals, and the intergrowth of CDO and new polymorph was observed in the CDS-1 crystal. Moreover, two new zeolites IM-5 and SSZ-57 were also studied by TEM. We found that the space group of IM-5 is non-centrosymmetrical, and in SSZ-57 the new structure with slightly larger c parameter was observed compared to MEL.Chiral mesoporous silica nanotube and chiral mesoporous carbon nanotube were aslo investigated by TEM. We found that the former was synthesised by hollowing out process and it possesses chiral mesopores in the wall, the latter was synthesised by templating and seeding method. Electron tomography was first applied to study the handedness of the chiral mesoporous nanotube. Furthermore, TEM studies verified that bifunctional mesoporous silica has a Fm-3m structure, and mesoporous carbon FDU-16 has a Im-3m structure.