SSZ-27: A Small-Pore Zeolite with Large Heart-Shaped Cavities Determined by using Multi-crystal Electron Diffraction

The high-silica zeolite SSZ-27 was synthesized using one of the isomers of the organic structure-directing agent that is known to produce the large-pore zeolite SSZ-26 (CON). The structure of the as-synthesized form was solved using multi-crystal electron diffraction data. Data were collected on eighteen crystals, and to obtain a high-quality and complete data set for structure refinement, hierarchical cluster analysis was employed to select the data sets most suitable for merging. The framework structure of SSZ-27 can be described as a combination of two types of cavities, one of which is shaped like a heart. The cavities are connected through shared 8-ring windows to create straight channels that are linked together in pairs to form a one-dimensional channel system. Once the framework structure was known, molecular modelling was used to find the best fitting isomer, and this, in turn, was isolated to improve the synthesis conditions for SSZ-27.