An extra-large-pore zeolite with intersecting 18-, 12-, and 10-membered ring channels.

Zeolites with extra-large pores have attracted great attention because of their important applications such as in hydrocracking, catalysis, and separation of large molecules. Despite much progress has been made during the past decades, the synthesis of these materials remains a big challenge. A new extra-large-pore zeolite NUD-1 (Nanjing University Du's group zeolite no. 1) is synthesized by using an approach based on supramolecular self-assemblies of small aromatic organic cations as structure-directing agents. NUD-1 possesses interconnecting 18-, 12-, and 10-membered ring channels, built from the same building units as those of ITQ-33 and ITQ-44. There coexist single 3-membered ring, double-3-membered ring and double-4-membered ring secondary building units in NUD-1, which have not been seen in any other zeolites.