Hybrid materials physisorption

The research field still not well explored is the hybrid materials where hydrogen is bonded through physisorption mixed with chemisorption. Finally, there is the all new emerging field of metallo-organic frameworks, which we did not attempt to cover in this book, for the sake of maintaining conciseness and competency. A materials breakthrough coming from these areas cannot be excluded, and in contrary are quite anticipated. 

This chapter will thus not deal with the synthesis and characterization of hybrid structures or with the application of hybrid materials in classical fields, such as separation/extraction, catalysis, or physisorption. Instead, new functional sensing concepts having an improved level of performance or sophistication will be highlighted. " Special attention will be paid to hybrid systems that clearly show synergic functional effects that are not found in molecular-based systems or with unmodified nanoscopic solids alone. 

As mentioned earlier, research on creating hybrid catalytic materials has been an area of interest for some time, and thus, there are a variety of methods that are used to immobilize catalytic species onto support materials. Some common examples are physisorption of the catalyst to the surface, electrostatic catalyst/surface interactions, and encapsulation of the catalyst into the pores of microporous materials [2], These methods can suffer from leaching in many solvents, competitive binding with charged or polar substrates, and limited usable substrate size and diffusion due to the support s small pore size, respectively. The method that offers the most promise of stability of attachment as well as flexibility in synthesis is covalent reaction between the catalyst and the support. This is the method employed in our research. By approaching the tethering process in a controlled and defined way, the surface catalytic species can be more uniform and behave more similarly to very well-defined homogeneous catalysts. 

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