Zeolitic membranes: Synthesis, properties, and prospects

This article is intended to describe recent progress in the synthesis of zeolitic membranes and their permeation properties. While hydrothermal synthesis has been widely employed for zeolitic-membrane synthesis, the development of a new technique for zeolite synthesis, vapor-phase transport (VPT), has enabled us to prepare pinhole-free, zeolite-porous support composite membranes. This article consists of three sections that describe: a survey of the hydrothermal synthesis of zeolitic membranes, our synthesis results and the formation mechanism of zeolitic membranes by the VPT method as well as some permeation results to show the prospects of zeolitic membranes.