Oriented growth of TS-1 zeolite ultrathin films on poly(ethylene oxide) monolayer templates

Self-assembled monolayers of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEOM) were used as templates to direct the nucleation and subsequent oriented growth of TS-1 zeolite thin films. The resulting TS-1 zeolite thin films exhibited completely oriented crystalline domains with the 010 crystallographic direction parallel to the surface normal with a little deformation in the in-plane direction. Remarkably, the correlation length of the film is as extremely large as 1700 A (1200 A) in the out-of-plane (in-plane) direction. PEOM act as two-dimensional media for the nucleation and growth of highly oriented TS-1 zeolite thin films. This study demonstrates that the highly oriented TS-1 thin films can be achieved by using the inner parts of PEOM as templates.