A Novel Approach to the Extraction of Clusters from ZSM-5 Zeolite for Quantum-Chemical Search for Zn2+ Cation-Exchange Sites

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel approach to the extraction of cluster structures from a ZSM-5 zeolite lattice. The approach involves transforming the zeolite crystalline structure into a directed molecular graph followed by identifying cycles from which cluster structures are generated. One advantage of this approach is the complete similarity of the resultant cluster structures at equal input data, making the DBSCAN clustering method applicable to the identification of unique structures. Furthermore, this approach is effective in identifying the active and extended regions within a multilevel ONIOM model for subsequent quantum-chemical calculations. Finally, the proposed approach makes it possible to automate the extraction of cluster structures from ZSM-5 crystals and to select the most important structures for further analysis. To validate its efficiency, the novel approach was applied to identify the most probable location of Zn²⁺ cation-exchange sites in ZSM-5.