Organic-inorganic materials development

Therefore, numerous siloxane-based hybrid organic-inorganic materials have been developed in the past few years. This development yields many interesting new materials, with improved mechanical properties timable between those of glasses and those of polymers. Sol-gel processed hybrid materials such as, optical devices, new sensors and biosensors, new catalysts or membranes have been reported to have high efficiencly, good selectivity and stability (Lebeau, 1999). 

One of the most attractive properties of the sol/gel process is its unique low-temperature processing capability. The soft-chemistry characteristic of the sol/gel route provides opportunities to develop molecular level organic-inorganic materials wherein chemical modification allows physical encapsulation of biological molecules in these hybrid matrices. Another key property of sol/gel-derived materials is die freedom to tune the properties of the micro environment where the organic- or bio-molecules are confined and/or immobilized. The scale of porosity can be tailored from the nano to the micro scale for specific applications. 

In addition, some resists have been developed for special applications and with special properties. This is the case for example in microelectronics, where special hybrid organic-inorganic materials with low dielectric constants and high thermal and mechanical stability are being developed to simplify the dual damascene electrical interconnection process [56]. Also, resists loaded with functional nanoparticles can be patterned using NIL [57]. 

As mentioned earher, sohd-state NMR spectroscopy has always been a valuable investigation tool for sol-gel scientists, and several reviews have already been dedicated to this topic. Besides the one from Bonhomme et al. in 2007 [2] on the development of sohd-state NMR techniques for the characterization of sol-gel-derived materials, one can cite more recent ones focused on the characterization of organic-inorganic materials from Geppi et al. in 2009 [3] and from Bonhomme et al. in 2014 [4], and one dedicated to micelle-templated mesopo-rous solids from Alonso and Marichal in 2013 [5]. Niunerous examples on the use of sohd-state NMR techniques in the field of sol-gel materials can thus be found in these reviews. In this chapter, the aim is to focus on recent advances in... 

C. Bonhomme, C. Gervais and D. Laurencin, Recent NMR Developments Applied to Organic-Inorganic Materials, Prog. Nucl. Magn. Reson. Spectrosc., 2014, 77, 1. 

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