Researchers find crystalline porous material can exist in one dimension
3/9/2022
By Ashley WennersHerron
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Researchers have revealed that crystalline porous materials widely used to produce chemicals, fuels and more can exist in one-dimensional nanotubular shapes. Called zeolites, the materials were previously only produced in two or three dimensions. The finding was published in the Jan. 6 issue of Science.
Xueyi Zhang, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and his doctoral student, Xinyang Yin, contributed to the study led by researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and Stockholm University.
The Georgia Tech team was designing syntheses to assemble 2D zeolite materials and observed a new type of self-assembly process in the base molecules, resulting in a novel 1D zeolite material with a tube-like structure with regular, perforated walls. Termed zeolitic nanotube, the material was unlike any zeolite previously synthesized or discovered in nature.
The Penn State and Stockholm researchers revealed the atomic structure of the zeolite nanotube with transmission electron microscopy and other precise, high-resolution imaging. The structure was different from its 2D or 3D counterparts, with a unique arrangement of atoms that forces the material to become a 1D tube.
According to the researchers, the zeolite nanotube may have potential applications in membrane separations, catalysis, sensing and energy devices.
Read the original press release issued by Georgia Tech here.
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Xueyi Zhang. Credit: Penn State
