摘要：

The lasting extensive interest in zeolite molecular sieves, a class of nanoporous aluminosilicate oxidic crystals, lies in their three special properties:(a) the nanoscale porous cage that can serve as size- and/or shape-based host to recognize, select, and discriminate among the molecules, (b) the well-defined and controllable charge environment and charge strength inside pores that can facilitate or inhibit certain chemical processes, and (c) the well-organized pores/channels that can host the organization and assembly of molecules to display novel optical or electrochemical properties. Zeolitic materials possess yet another very important property, namely, their huge surface-to-volume ratio. Conventionally synthesized zeolites are quite large crystals with grain size at micrometer scale. This implies that the dominant portion of the "overall surface area" is attributable to the " interior surface" of nanopores/nanochannels instead of the "exterior surfaces" of the crystal powders. In many situations, this has limited the efficacy of zeolite materials, particularly in many catalysis-related applications. In order to improve the efficiency of catalysis of zeolite materials, it is often desirable to achieve a balanced ratio (~1) between interior-surface-area and exterior-surface-area, namely, to significantly reduce the size of zeolite crystals.

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