Synthesis of Zeolite as Ordered Multi-Crystal Arrays using Uniformly Aligned Polyurethane as Templates

Abstract

Two types of glass plates coated with uniformly aligned polyurethane films were produced by repeating the cycles of the alternative exposures of the glass plates to 1,4-phenylene diisocyanate (PDI) and 2-butyne-1,4-diol (BDO) and to PDI and terephthalic acid bis-(2-hydroxy ethyl) ester (TBE) for 500 times at elevated temperatures. The glass plates coated with uniformly aligned poly-(PDI-BDO) 500 (500 represents the number of the cycle) produced monolayers of closely packed 2D arrays of silicalite-1 crystals with the average size of 370 × 200 × 500 nm on the glass plates upon immersion of the glass plates into a dense gel consisting of tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS), tetrapropylammonium hydroxide (TPA + OH − ), and water (mole ratio = 7:1.5:330) followed by the hydrothermal reaction at 180 °C for 2 h. The silicalite-1 crystals were aligned with the c-axes perpendicular to the substrate plane. Upon switching the polymer from poly-(PDI-BDO) 500 to poly-(PDI-TBE) 500 the orientations of the silicalite-1 crystals in the 2D arrays changed from c to a axes perpendicular to the substrate. This report therefore demonstrates that the uniformly aligned polyurethane films serve as the templates for the growth of closely packed multi-crystal arrays of silicalite-1 in uniform orientations and the nature of the polyurethane film affects the resulting orientations of the crystals. We propose that the supramolecularly organized organic-inorganic composites consisting of the hydrolyzed organic products and the seed crystals responsible for the above phenomena.

Phosphor positioning for effective wavelength conversion in dye-sensitized solar cells

“…By applying the wavelength conversion effect of phosphor to DSSCs, t-LaVO 4 :Dy 3 + microcrystals serving as the externally loaded film were examined to investigate the wavelength conversion effect. The polyethyleneimine (PEI)-induced manual assembly technique was adopted for the phosphor thin film [33,34]. The as-synthesized t-LaVO 4 :Dy 3 + microcrystals were assembled with a 250 nm film thickness and a one-axis orientation on the transparent glass in Figure S7.…”