Selective active site placement in Lewis acid zeolites and implications for catalysis of oxygenated compounds

Abstract

The selective incorporation of isolated framework Lewis acid sites at specific crystallographic positions in high-silica zeolites was achieved by applying a rationalized post-synthetic grafting methodology. The removal of framework Ge atoms from a Ge-BEC zeolite with low concentrations of Ge in the framework (Si/Ge ∼ 150) followed by grafting allows the synthesis of Sn-BEC zeolites with Sn atoms positionally biased into the double-4-ring (D4R) crystallographic positions of the BEC framework. Spectroscopic characterization using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) coupled with theoretical calculations revealed that Sn atoms preferentially form open Sn sites in the D4R of Sn-BEC. This observation was supported by IR spectra of adsorbed deuterated acetonitrile (CD₃CN), a known titrant of Sn sites in zeolites. The catalytic implications of selective incorporation of open Sn sites in Sn-BEC were probed using the Meerwein–Ponndorf–Verley–Oppenauer (MPVO) reaction. Although the MPVO turnover rates normalized by the total number of open Sn sites were comparable on Sn-BEC and a conventional Sn-Beta catalyst synthesized in fluoride media (Sn-Beta(F)), Sn-BEC demonstrated higher per gram reaction rates because of its larger fraction of open sites compared to Sn-Beta(F). These results highlight the advantage of placing active sites in targeted locations within a zeolite structure. The methodology presented here to selectively place catalytic active sites via sacrificial heteroatoms, such as Ge, can be generalized for the design of many other tetrahedrally-coordinated metal-containing zeolites.