ORDERED MOLECULAR ARRAYS AS TEMPLATES - A NEW APPROACH TO THE SYNTHESIS OF MESOPOROUS MATERIALS

Mesoporous solids with adjustable pore sizes and narrow pore size distributions have been lacking in the repertoire of the solid-state chemist and materials scientist. By extending typical zeolite synthesis procedures to an approach that can be designated as templating, by self-assembled molecular arrays, researchers from the Mobil Oil Company have now been able to crystallize materials with pore sizes adjustable between 16 and over 100 angstrom; the pore size distributions are as narrow as those of the conventional zeolites.