Construction of monodispersed single-crystalline hierarchical ZSM-5 nanosheets via anisotropic etching

Hierarchical zeolites and single-crystalline zeolite nanosheets (NSs) have been recognized as two separate types of targeting porous materials to overcome the diffusion limitations of traditional bulk zeolites. The synthesis of uniform single-crystalline hierarchical zeolite NSs featured with NS morphology and interconnected mesoporosity, remains rarely reported. In this work, we prepared ZSM-5 zeolites with the above microstructural features via simple alkaline etching. Moreover, both their microstructure and acid strength could be accurately tuned with this approach, resulting in not only higher conversion rate and BTX selectivity but also superior anti-coking performance in the subsequent methanol aromatization reaction.