A thermodynamic investigation of selenium confined in silicalite zeolite

In this paper, we study the practical feasibility of selenium adsorption in silicalite-1 zeolite by performing Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations on a simulation box including the porous matrix and its outer surface. This work aims at gaining insight on the stability of semi-conductor wires in microporous materials. The simulations at two different temperatures show two distinct behaviors: adsorption occurs inside the pores at 200degreesC while solely on the external surface at 650degreesC. This indicates that adsorption inside the pore network can only proceed below the pseudo-wetting transition temperature that lies between 200 and 650degreesC. The existence of such transition temperature is thus crucial if one aims to produce nanowires from microporous materials by adsorption from a gas phase.