Article
Chem. Mater., Vol. 22, No. 7, 2010 2277
in this work the authors demonstrated that chiral zeolites
are actually able to perform enantioselective operations.
Very recently, a new chiral zeolite topology has been
discovered.9
in the synthesis of SSZ-56;17 the polycyclic SDA used in
the synthesis of zeolite SSZ-73 (SAS);18 or the cis and
trans isomers of N,N-diethyldecahydroquinolinium, which
direct the crystallization of several different zeolite struc-
tures for each of them.19
Zeolite beta is the commonly cited example of a chiral
zeolite structure. This zeolite is a heavily intergrown
material constituted of at least three closely related
structures, polymorphs A, B, and C. Polymorph A is in
the form of two enantiomorphs containing a helical pore
along the c-axis,10 while polymorphs B and C do not show
chirality. In recent years, polymorphs B and C have been
synthesized as pure phases,11,12 but to date, it has not been
possible to obtain polymorph A as a pure phase. It was
reported that a zeolite beta enriched in polymorph A was
obtained by using a chiral SDA, and this sample of zeolite
beta was capable of performing enantioselective adsorp-
tion and catalysis, yielding a low enantiomeric excess.13
The hydrothermal synthesis of zeolite materials often
requires the presence of organic molecules, usually called
structure directing agents (SDAs), which organize the
inorganic tetrahedral units into a particular topology
around themselves, therefore providing the initial build-
ing blocks for further crystallization of a particular
structure type.14 These organic molecules are encapsu-
lated within the void space of the nascent frameworks,
thus keeping occluded after the crystallization process.
Hence the size and shape of the SDA plays an important
role in determining the outcome of zeolite syntheses;
actually, there is usually some correlation between the
shape of the molecule and that of the pores crystallized in
its presence.15 In this context, the main strategy tradi-
tionally followed to synthesize a chiral zeolite framework
is the use of an asymmetric organic molecule as a structure
directing agent to impart chirality into the inorganic
framework. For a transfer of the chirality from the
SDA molecule to the inorganic framework to occur, a
close structural relationship between the host and the
guest species should exist. In this regard, it is worth
mentioning that, in some cases, the structure directing
effect of organic molecules in the synthesis of zeolite
materials is so strong that different isomers of the same
organic molecule can show different phase selectivities.
Some examples of this behavior are the different structure
directing effect that exert the diastereoisomers of the
cation 4,40-trimethylenebis(1-benzyl-1-methylpiperidinium)
on the synthesis of zeolite beta;16 the specificity of the
transisomerofN,N-diethyl-2-methyldecahydroquinolinium
Recent work in our group has demonstrated the effi-
cient structure directing role of (S)-N-benzyl-2-pyrrolidi-
nemethanol in the synthesis of AFI-type microporous
aluminophosphates.20,21 In these works, we observed that
the use of this molecule as a SDA provides a rich
supramolecular chemistry that can enhance its molecular
chiral nature and thus the eventual transfer of the chir-
ality to the microporous framework. On the basis of these
grounds, we have studied in this work the structure
directing effect of a related molecule, 2-hydroxymethyl-
1-benzyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium (bmpm), in the synthesis
of all-silica zeolites. In this case, the attachment of a
methyl group to the tertiary amine provides a more rigid
asymmetric atom in the SDA molecule, what could
eventually enhance the chiral character of the SDA,
favoring in principle the transfer of chirality to the frame-
work. Besides, the presence of two rings (phenyl and
pyrrolidine) provides to this molecule a high rigidity, a
feature that is also required for a transfer of the chirality
to the nascent framework, provided a strong structure
directing effect occurs. In this work we report the results
we have obtained using the S,S diasteroisomer alone as
well as a mixture of the S,S and R,S diastereisomers of the
chiral cation bmpm as SDA. The synthesis and charac-
terization of the materials are complemented with a
molecular modeling study aimed to understand the dif-
ferent structure directing efficiency of the S,S and R,S
diasteroisomers for the synthesis of the zeolite. A second-
ary aim of this study is to experimentally validate the
theoretical predictions provided by the computational
simulations by using a single diasteroisomer and a mix-
ture of both diastereoisomers in the synthesis of the
zeolite.
Experimental Section
Synthesis of SDA Cation. Both the pure S,S diastereoisomer
and the mixture of R,S and S,S diastereoisomers were prepared
according to Figure 1. As shown in this figure, the different
products are obtained depending on the initial tertiary amine,
making use of the different steric constraint provided by the
methyl or benzyl groups.
To prepare the pure S,S bmpm diastereoisomer (route 1), the
starting amine (S)-1-benzyl-2-pyrrolidinemethanol was methy-
lated in order to obtain the quaternary ammonium cation,
(1S,2S)-2-hydroxymethyl-1-benzyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium (bmpm)
iodide. In a typical preparation, 50.0 g of (S)-1-benzyl-2-pyrro-
lidinemethanol (Aldrich, 97%) were added over a solution
of 55.66 g of CH3I (50% exc., Fluka) in ethanol. After stirring
~
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