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A Sacrificial Seed Layer Strategy for Hierarchical MFI Zeolite Membranes With Enhanced Butane Isomer Separation Performance.

Created on 04 Jul 2026

Authors

Jun Li, Xingtong Yu, Xiaofei Lu, Huayu Zhang, Xinyi Gao, Lucy Wang, Le Zhu, Zhengbao Wang

Published in

Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English). Pages e5915781. Jul 03, 2026. Epub Jul 03, 2026.

Abstract

Zeolite membranes hold significant promise for industrially relevant gas separations; however, balancing high permeance and selectivity remains a persistent challenge. Although thinning the selective layer improves permeance, achieving precise fabrication remains a major bottleneck. Herein, we demonstrate a sacrificial seed layer strategy enabling the fabrication of hierarchical MFI zeolite membranes (HMFI) on commercial α-Al2O3 tubes. Through precise modulation of synergistic ionic interactions within the synthetic gel and the nutrient supply rate during crystallization, the seed layer functions as both a porogen to generate a macroporous sublayer and a "fertilizer" to promote surface gel crystallization, forming a dense top layer. The resulting HMFI membrane delivers more than a fourfold enhancement in the ideal selectivity of n-butane and isobutane (n-/i-butane), accompanied by a 37% rise in n-butane permeance compared with conventional MFI membranes. Moreover, with a 10/90 n-/i-butane mixture, it exhibits an excellent separation factor of 158, along with a high n-butane permeance (188 × 10-9 mol m-2 s-1 Pa-1), representing the highest performance for reported membranes on tubular supports. The strategy not only enables a novel route to high-performance membranes, but also enriches the conceptual framework of the conventional secondary growth protocol, offering new avenues for microstructural engineering.

PMID:
42397881
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 04 Jul 2026.

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