Synthesis and Characterization of High Quality AlPO4-5 Large Single Crystals

The AlPO4-5 molecular sieve has been synthesized hydrothermally by using tripropylamine (TPA) as the template, and pseudoboehmite and orthophosphoric acid as aluminum and phosphorus sources, respectively. The single crystals of AlPO4-5 with different sizes have been obtained by varying the molar ratio of reactants and the crystallization conditions (such as the temperature and time). The typical molar ratio of the reactive mixture is Al2O3∶P2O5∶TPA∶C2H5OH∶H2O∶HF=1∶1.2∶2.66∶80∶1000∶0.7， and perfect AlPO4-5 large single crystals with the maximum length up to 2.0 and 0.31 mm transverse dimension have been prepared by crystallizing the mixture at 457 K for 48 h. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) has been employed to observe the sizes and morphologies of the large single crystals of AlPO4-5. The structure of AlPO4-5 single crystal has been refined by the SMART 1000 single crystal diffractometer.