Sol-gel derived organic-inorganic hybrid materials: synthesis, characterizations and applications

Organic/inorganic hybrid materials prepared by the sol-gel approach have rapidly become a fascinating new field of research in materials science. The explosion of activity in this area in the past decade has made tremendous progress in both the fundamental understanding of the sol-gel process and the development and applications of new organic/inorganic hybrid materials. Polymer-inorganic nanocomposite present an interesting approach to improve the separation properties of polymer material because they possess properties of both organic and inorganic such as good permeability, selectivity, mechanical strength, and thermal and chemical stability. Composite material derived by combining the sol-gel approach and organic polymers synthesis of hybrid material were the focus area of review It has also been demonstrated in this review that a more complete understanding of their structure-property behavior can be gained by employing many of the standard tools that are utilized for developing similar structure-property relationships of organic polymers. This review article is introductory in nature and gives introduction to composite materials/nanocomposite, their applications and the methods commonly employed for their synthesis and characterization. A brief literature survey on the polysaccharide templated and polysaccharide/protein dual templated synthesis of silica composite materials is also presented in this review article.