Dendritic nanoarchitecture imparts ZSM-5 zeolite with enhanced adsorption and catalytic performance in energy applications

The development of zeolites possessing dendritic features represents a great opportunity for the design of novel materials with applications in a large variety of fields and, in particular, in the energy sector to afford its transition towards a low carbon system. In the current work, ZSM-5 zeolite showing a dendritic 3D nanoarchitecture has been synthesized by the functionalization of protozeolitic nanounits with an amphiphilic organosilane, which provokes the branched aggregative growth of zeolite embryos. Dendritic ZSM-5 exhibits outstanding accessibility arising from a highly interconnected network of radially-oriented mesopores (3 - 10 nm) and large cavities (20 - 80 nm), which add to the zeolitic micro -pores, thus showing a well-defined trimodal pore size distribution. These singular features provide den-dritic ZSM-5 with sharply enhanced performance in comparison with nano-and hierarchical reference materials when tested in a number of energy related applications, such as VOCs (toluene) adsorption (im-proved capacity), plastics (low-density polyethylene) catalytic cracking (boosted activity) and hydrogen production by methane catalytic decomposition (higher activity and deactivation resistance).(c) 2023 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. and Science Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

The synthesis of dendritic ZSM-5 zeolite with a 3D nanoarchitecture by functionalizing the protozeolitic nanounits has provided a great opportunity for the design of novel materials in the energy sector. Dendritic ZSM-5 exhibits outstanding accessibility and a well-defined trimodal pore size distribution, resulting in enhanced performance in various energy applications.