Design of microporous transition metal oxide catalysts and investigation of their synthesis conditions

Microporous materials based on cations of medium acidic strength. such as, the alumino-silicate zeolites, represent one of the most widely used hetero geneous catalysts. Synthesising novel materials that could combine the mole cular-sieve characteristics of Si-zeolites. with the much higher acidic str ength and redox properties of early transition metal cations, would be a ma jor breakthrough in catalysis. In this paper we examine this topic employin g computer modelling in advance of experiment: we design suitable microporo us structures of MoO3 and WO3, compare their relative energy with those of the known dense polymorphs of the materials. and finally explore the possib ility of their synthesis via a template/host approach previously developed for zeolitic materials. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.