traditional hydrothermal syntheses would produce intermediate materials with 2D feature, such as MCM-22P, [ 7,8 ] PREFER, [ 9 ] which are composed of crystalline zeolite layers with the unit-cell thickness stacking on top of each other in ordered or disordered patterns. [10][11][12][13][14][15] Unlike traditional 3D zeolites, the crystal growth of frameworks in 2D layered zeolites is restricted in one particular direction, leaving lots of hydroxyl groups on layer surface. As zeolites are normally defi ned as 3D materials that possess regular micropore systems and consist of TO 4 tetrahedra, layered zeolite precursors containing silanols could not be regarded as zeolites in the strictest sense, but they are broadly included in the family of zeolite materials. Thus, the as-synthesized 2D zeolites are often denoted as layered zeolite precursors (the typical examples are shown in Table 1 ), [7][8][9] which would transform into their 3D order/disorder counterparts after removing organic molecules and condesation of interlayer silanols via calcination. [ 10 ] In the early research stage, the layered zeolite precursors are discovered accidentally in traditional hydrothermal syntheses, because we have limited control over the traditional synthesis process due to the incomplete understanding of crystallization mechanism. At that stage, one of the most attractive features of 2D zeolites is that they could transform into zeolite materials with hierarchical architectures. In some cases, the traditional synthesis produces hierarchical layered material, such as MCM-56, [ 26 ] in which the crystalline zeolite layers disorderly stacked. Furthermore, the recognition that the obtained layered precursors could be modifi ed into various hierarchical zeolite structures (such as delaminated, pillared, interlayer expanded and others) make them signifi cantly different from conventional 3D zeolite materials with rigid structures. Thus, the construction of hierarchical zeolite materials from the perspective of 2D layered zeolite precursors is an important research aspect during the past few years.With the improved synthetic techniques, layered zeolites are not only increasing in number, but also expanding the notion in composition and structure. One remarkable breakthrough in recent years is the discovery of 2D MFI nanosheets with the single unit-cell thickness (about 2 nm), which is achieved by adopting Gemini-type bifunctional surfactants as organic structure-directing agent (OSDA) in hydrothermal synthesis. [ 49 ] The calcined MFI nanosheets become a special kind of hierarchical zeolites Two-dimensional (2D) zeolites, originating from lamellar precursors, are a special kind of porous materials, in which crystalline zeolite nanolayers are weakly assembled in one particular direction. As there is no covalentbond between layers, the stacking sequences could be manipulated and possibly controlled to derive a family of zeolitic materials with structural diversity. The research on 2D zeolites arises from the primary casual discovery during ...