The Influence of the Synthesis Temperature on Cobalt Phthalocyanine Encapsulation in Zeolite Y

Several characterization techniques were applied to study the effect of the synthesis temperature on the physicochemical properties of cobalt phthalocyanine incoporated into zeolite Y. The cobalt phthalocyanine was synthesized in the supercages of zeolite Y by the template synthesis method at two different temperatures of 200 and300 °C and characterized by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, Fourier transform infraredspectroscopy, pore volume analysis, unit cell dimension calculation, UV-vis spectroscopy,thermogravimetric analysis and X-ray diffraction. The results show that the catalyst synthesizedat 200 °C contains 11 wt.% cobalt phthalocyanine and almost all of thiscomplex is encapsulated in the supercages as monomeric species. At higher temperature aconsiderable amount of the cobalt phthalocyanine is hosted in the mesopores and/or on theexternal surface of the zeolite as aggregates. The migration of one part of the cobalt cationsfrom the supercages to the small cages at 300 °C decreases the formation of thenon-aggregated encapsulated phthalocyanine molecules in the zeolite supercages. Theaggregated cobalt phthalocyanine formed at the surface corresponds to the -polymorph stateof the phthalocyanine.