Zeolite nanosheets with excellent mass transfer are attractive, but their successful syntheses are normally resulted from a huge number of experiments. Here, we show the design of a small organic template for the synthesis of self-pillared pentasil (SPP) zeolite nanosheets from theoretical calculations in interaction energies between organic templates and pentasil zeolite skeletons. As expected, the SPP zeolite nanosheets with the thickness at 10−20 nm have been synthesized successfully. Characterizations show that the SPP zeolite nanosheets with about 90% MFI and 10% MEL structures have good crystallinity, the house-of-card morphology, large surface area, and fully four-coordinated aluminum species. More importantly, methanol-topropylene tests show that the SPP zeolite nanosheets exhibit much higher propylene selectivity and longer reaction lifetime than conventional ZSM-5 zeolite. These results offer a good opportunity to develop highly efficient zeolite catalysts in the future.

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Zeolite molecular sieves with at least eight-membered rings are widely applied in industrial applications, while zeolite crystals with six-membered rings are normally regarded as useless products due to the occupancy of the organic templates and/or inorganic cation in the micropores that could not be removed. Herein, we showed that a novel six-membered ring molecular sieve (ZJM-9) with fully open micropores could be achieved by a reconstruction route. The mixed gas breakthrough experiments such as CH 3 OH/H 2 O, CH 4 /H 2 O, CO 2 /H 2 O, and CO/H 2 O at 25 °C showed that this molecular sieve was efficient for selective dehydration. Particularly, a lower desorption temperature (95 °C) of ZJM-9 than that (250 °C) of the commercial 3A molecular sieve might offer an opportunity for saving more energy in dehydration processes.