Overview inorganic-organic networks

To meet the challenges of new material requirements, scientists must strive constantly to develop new systems. One recent approach has been to prepare inorganic-organic hybrid materials by using the sol-gel method common to ceramists. This technique allows a considerable range of chemistry to be used and may lead to the development of a whole array of systems that have potential applications (structural, optical, etc.). This chapter provides an overview of the general status of this approach, with emphasis on the work that comes from our laboratory. The chemistry discussed in this chapter involves the use of silicon-containing species in the preparation of polymeric network systems. 

The synthesis, characterization and properties of nanomaterials have become very active areas of research in the last few years. In particular, nanostructured materials assembled by means of supramolecular organization offer many exciting possibilities. These include self-assembled monolayers and multilayers with different functionalities, intercalation in preassembled layered hosts and inorganic three-dimensional networks. The reader is referred to the special issue of Chemistry of Materials91 for an overview of present day interests. There are many recent reviews on the varied aspects of nanomaterials. The work of Alivisatos92 on the structural transitions, elec-... 

In this chapter, we present an overview of the development of novel soft, nanohybrid materials (e.g., nanocomposite gels [19, 21, 28-30] and soft polymer nanocomposites [31-33]) with unique organic-inorganic network structures that overcome the previous limitations and exhibit excellent optical and mechanical properties in addition to outstanding new characteristics. 

It is impossible to give an overview of every nanoparticle class in one chapter, thus we will limit our discussion to an important and more cohesive field, dendrimer nanocomposites. Dendrimer composite nanoparticles (or Composite Nanodevices - CNDs) are nanosized organic-inorganic hybrid particles made from dendrimer templates that contain small clusters of inorganic nanomaterials of interest entrapped in the network of the macromolecular templates. The resulting composite nanoparticles display the chemical and physical properties both of the inorganic molecules/atoms/clusters and their template. 

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