Journal of Materials Science, Vol.54, No.6, 4573-4578, 2019
Accelerated synthesis of zeolites via radicalized seeds
By means of milling and heating, the zeolite crystals can be radicalized forming surface non-bridging oxygen hole center (NBOHC, Si-O). The corresponding g values of 2.0043 and 2.0048 unambiguously confirm the existence of the Si-O radicals in the milled and heated crystals via electron paramagnetic resonance . The active Si-O radicals can react with water to form hydroxyl free radicals to accelerate the crystallization of zeolite along with seeds . Radicalized crystals are used as seeds that show obvious accelerating effect in the crystallization of Na-A and nanosized silicalite-1 than the non-radicalized seeds. At the same crystallization time, solid products with much better crystallinity and more yields could be obtained using radicalized seeds compared with non-radicalized seeds. A new seeding-synthesis-related strategy is developed to accelerate the crystallization of zeolites.