Recent developments in zeolite-like materials synthesis and characterisation

In the last few years considerable effort has been directed at the targeted synthesis of zeolites and zeolite-like microporous materials with predeter mined physical and catalytic properties. With new computational techniques, it has become possible to design templates for the synthesis of specific m icroporous structures with desired pore size and connectivities. With regar d to zeolite-like materials, much attention has been focused on transition metal containing systems, like zincosilicates, titanosilicates and various metalloaluminophosphates with a potential to generate specific redox condit ions, in addition to Bronsted and Lewis active catalytic centres. Experimen tal determination of subtle structural features such as the nature and posi tion of the catalytically active metal sites, and the location, orientation and disorder of templates, metals or complexes within the microporous host s has become possible using new characterisation techniques, mostly based o n X-ray diffraction and the use of synchrotron and neutron radiation source s. In situ studies of the kinetics of nucleation, crystal growth and phase transitions or catalyst activation and operation at elevated temperatures h ave remarkably benefited from the new high-flux and well-collimated third-g eneration synchrotron radiation sources, and from the advances in the X-ray detector design and data handling.