Template free facile synthesis of mesoporous mordenite for bulky molecular catalytic reactions

The synthesis of highly stable mesoporous zeolites is one of the great challenges in materials science. Soft and hard templating methods have widely been applied to synthesize mesoporous zeolites having different pore diameters and structures. Here, we report a facile and template free hydrothermal synthesis of mesoporous mordenite (MOR) by controlling synthesis conditions. The small nanoparticles of ∼50–80 nm were self-assembled into 2–3 μm MOR. Intracrystalline mesopores of ∼3–5 nm were abundantly observed throughout the MOR nanoparticles. Synthesized mesoporous MOR demonstrated significantly improved catalytic efficiencies (∼100%), 3–5 times higher than its conventional counterparts (CBV 10A and CBV 21).