Physicochemical Characterization of Silicalite-1 Nanophase Material

A silicalite-1 nanophase material with an elementary particle size of 18-100 nm is synthesized from clear solution and isolated and purified using supercentrifugation. The nanopowder is characterized in detail using scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, attenuated force microscopy, Si-29 magic angle spinning NMR, C-13 cross polarization magic angle spinning NMR, X-ray diffraction, dinitrogen physisorption, and thermogravimetric analysis and compared with micrometer-sized silicalite-1. The nanosized and micrometer-sized materials have many common properties including the refined structure and the nature and concentrations of tetrapropylammonium species incorporated during the synthesis. Unique properties of the nanophase are a splitting of the characteristic framework vibration at 550 cm(-1) into a doublet at 555 and 570 cm(-1), a high concentration of defect sites, and a strain in the crystallites along the "a" crystallographic direction. The nanophase exhibits a two-stage dinitrogen physisorption in the low-pressure region, ascribed to adsorptions in micropores created by the stacking of the nanoparticles in addition to adsorptions in the intracrystalline micropores.