Organic/inorganic assemblies

Our concept is based on the use of long chain n-alkylamines as templates which were first applied by tHe group of Pinnavaia in neutral conditions (10-13). The advantage of their type of template as compared to ionic ones is that the template can be removed by extraction from the mesopores because it is not strongly bound in the organic-inorganic assembly. 

Similar organic-inorganic systems, which were ultimately crosslinked by sol-gel chemistry, were prepared with cores composed of high- Tg dendrimers [69, 70]. Tough materials with high heat resistance were obtained. Also, coreshell structures were prepared via silylation, or hyrosilylation. The resulting structures were further crosslinked to give supramolecular assemblies [71]. 

The development of chemistry in the last 20 years has revealed a significant shift of interest on the part of theoreticians and experimentalists [1,2]. Earlier, chemists attention was concentrated on atoms and atom-atom bonds. This strategy has been very successful in the creation of new molecules with unusual structures and with new chemical and physical properties. However, two decades ago, the primary objects of chemical studies become intermolecular interactions leading to complex molecular assemblies that exhibit unusual and often unique macro properties. This situation has dominated in all areas of modem chemical science from physical, organic, inorganic, and organometallic chemistry to material science and biochemistry, and has resulted in the formulation of new chemical disciplines supramolecular chemistry and crystal engineering. 

The rate of energy and electron transfer in any of these systems is an ensemble average of all sites within the layered assembly, and thus there is no single rate for any of the processes in the assemblies. Nonetheless, in addition to the increased quantum yield, assemblies constructed with the HTiNbOs spacer exhibit a long-lived charge-separated state component not observed in the a-ZrP spaced assemblies, of x = 900 ps. While there is still much to be learned from the study of multi-chromophore arrays, this synthetic approach appears to hold much promise for the creation of organic-inorganic hybrid solid state devices. 

Hybrid nanomaterials involving organic, inorganic, as well as biological systems or assemblies. 

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