Zeolite with tunable intracrystal mesoporosity synthesized with carbon aerogel as a secondary template

In this paper, carbon aerogel was investigated as a potential template for generating size controllable intracrystal mesopore system in zeolite. For this purpose zeolite samples were synthesized with carbon aerogels having different structural parameters as secondary template, and characterized with XRD, FT-IR, SEM, TEM as well as low-temperature nitrogen adsorption. Results indicated that the carbon aerogel synthesized by simple ambient drying method can be used for generating additional intracrystal mesopore channel in zeolite without special control on the crystallization conditions. The pore size of the additional intracrystal mesopore system in zeolite can be controlled over a wide range by simply changing the catalyst concentration during sol–gel reaction of resorcinol and formaldehyde, the initial step of carbon aerogel synthesis.