Making the ADOR process industrially viable

The recently developed ADOR (Assembly-Disassembly-Organisation-Reassembly) process for the synthesis of zeolites, enables access to materials unattainable via conventional pathways. The concept exploits a chemical weakness in a parent zeolite, which is used to break up the framework in distinct positions, while keeping the main layers intact. This weakness is the comparably fragile bond between germanium and oxygen, hence the ADOR process is limited to germanium containing zeolites so far. Due to the high price of germanium-precursors, industrial applications would not be viable at the moment. To overcome this inherent problem, the aim of the project is to find ways for the ADOR pathway to become more economical.
One possibility to be investigated is seed-directed synthesis, where a small amount of seed-crystals, obtained by ADOR, is used to synthesise more material of the same framework. Hereby the usage of germanium may be reduced or can potentially be avoided altogether, after the initial step.
The second method aims to establish a solvent-less synthesis for the parent materials. The main advantages of this method are the avoidance of essentially any waste solvent and the more efficient use of the precursors, as they cannot be lost via the liquid phase.
A mechanochemical approach will also be undertaken, in which the effect of applied mechanical energy (e.g. via ball milling) on the parent zeolites and/or daughter materials will be investigated.