Combining Phase Separation with Pseudomorphic Transformation for the Control of the Pore Architecture of Functional Materials: A Review

Chemical phase separation and pseudomorphic transformation are very powerful tools for fine tuning the porous architecture of inorganic oxides. In this short review the basic principles of the preparation of centimetric bodies made of zeolites is introduced. The synthesis of monoliths with homogeneous distributions of interconnected macropores with skeleton made of SOD, LTA and FAU crystals is described. Their unique hierarchical porous texture featuring the structural micropores, intercrystalline mesopores and flow-through macropores leads to remarkable hydrodynamic behavior in separation, catalysis and ion exchange processes operated in continuous-flow mode. In the base-catalyzed carbon-carbon bond formation, productivities twice those achievable with fixed-beds of packed particles are observed. In the capture of strontium present in radioactive effluents their efficiency is three orders of magnitude that of traditional powder in batch.