The Sieves That Catalyze: A Narrative Review of Zeolites from Barrer's Syntheses to Rational Design

Abstract

Zeolites---the crystalline aluminosilicates whose pores sieve the molecules and catalyze the hydrocarbons---moved from Barrer's 1948 syntheses through Breck's molecular sieves, Weisz and Frilette's shape selectivity, Flanigen's aluminophosphates, Davis's VPI-5, Kresge's MCM-41, and Corma's solid acids to the rational design's review. This article presents a narrative review of that arc's canonical line: Barrer's 1948 synthesis, Weisz and Frilette's 1960 shape-selective catalysis, Flanigen and colleagues's 1986 aluminophosphates, Breck's 1974 Zeolite Molecular Sieves, Chen, Garwood, and Dwyer's 1989 shape selectivity, Davis and colleagues's 1988 eighteen-membered rings, Kresge and colleagues's 1992 MCM-41, Corma's 1995 inorganic solid acids, Davis's 2002 ordered porous materials, Cundy and Cox's 2003 hydrothermal history, Corma and Davis's 2004 synthesis issues, and Moliner, Rey, and Corma's 2013 rational design. The review is organized around three themes: the synthesis's foundations, in which the mineral's laboratory synthesis, the molecular sieves's book, and the intracrystalline's catalysis founded the field's materials; the catalysis's shape, in which the aluminophosphates's expansion, the eighteen-membered rings's, the mesoporous's template, and the solid acids's review carried the zeolites into the catalysis's center; and the rational design, in which the ordered porous's applications, the hydrothermal history's, the synthesis issues's, and the industrial's design's review completed the field's maturity. It is concluded that zeolites are the chemistry's ordered pores---and that their arc is the pore's design from the mineral's accident to the rational's synthesis.