Intern: Marisol Alvarez
Mentor: Brian Adair
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Tony Cheetham
Supporting Grant Agency: Materials Research Lab
Academic Major: Biology/Engineering
Project Title: "The Synthesis and Characterization of Antimony Phosphate Zeolites"
Abstract: Zeolites are aluminosilicate molecules with microporous channels. Zeolites have a variety of applications as ion exchangers, molecular sieves and acid catalysts. New zeolite materials include some metal and transition metal phosphates. The purpose of our project is to synthesize antimony phosphate molecules using hydrothermal synthesis and avoid the use hydrofluoric acid to eliminate fluorine atoms that usually become part of the structure and are not desirable. Amines and cations are used as structure directing agents. We used different sources of phosphorous and varied the solvents in our syntheses. We found that temperature as well as the concentration of water is very important in determining the resultant product.
New material: "Start Structure" NH4+ (SbO)3(CH3PO3)2
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