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Porous materials

Zeolites shine bright

Nature Materials volume 15, pages 933–934 (2016)Cite this article

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Zeolite-encaged silver nanoclusters as highly photoluminescent materials.

Zeolites are porous solids with channels, pores or cages of nanometre dimensions. As a result, they are ideal hosts for small nanoparticles, giving these functional materials electronic and optical properties1,2,3,4. Due to the intricate host–guest chemistry of zeolites it is even possible to design and construct metal nanoparticles with a specific size, geometry and charge within their porous frameworks. For example, zeolite-encaged silver nanoclusters possess potentially useful optical properties, which could be applied for the development of new biomedical and sensing devices, though to date, achieving such new technological materials has been particularly challenging. Now, a group of researchers led by Maarten Roeffaers, Johan Hofkens and Paolo Samorì report in Nature Materials5 a systematic investigation of a variety of zeolite-encaged silver nanoclusters, and how their electronic and optical properties can be fine-tuned to achieve a photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of nearly 100% — the highest PLQY observed so far for any silver cluster contained in zeolite-based materials — despite requiring only low silver loading. Equally as important, the authors propose mechanistic guidelines for the design of new families of photoluminescent materials.

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Figure 1: Zeolite-encaged silver nanoclusters.
Figure 2: Structure photoluminescence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bert M. Weckhuysen is in the Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis group, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, Utrecht University, Universiteitsweg 99, 3584 CG Utrecht, The Netherlands,

    Bert M. Weckhuysen

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  1. Bert M. Weckhuysen
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Correspondence to Bert M. Weckhuysen.

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Weckhuysen, B. Zeolites shine bright. Nature Mater 15, 933–934 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4730

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