Introduction - Mesoporous Organic-Inorganic Non-Siliceous Hybrid Materials - page 3

To date, a great diversity of mesoporous materials has been synthesized.
Since the first report of mesoporous silica materials (M41S) pioneered by Mobil
Corporation, the most intriguing mesoporous silica-based materials, so-called
SBA series, were explored by the Stucky group from the University of California,
Santa Barbara. Besides, scientists from other countries, including China, Japan,
Korea, Canada, UK, and France, have contributed a lot to the development of
mesoporous families. The KIT series developed by a Korea research team, Prof.
Ryoo's group in KAIST, and the FDU series developed by Prof. Zhao's group in
Fudan University have been extensively investigated.
On the other hand, the use of pure inorganic silica-based materials is limited
to physical properties concerned with catalytic supports and adsorbents, showing
insufficiency with respect to the low mechanical strength and the difficulties in post-
modification or functionalization. Interestingly, pure porous organic frameworks,
such as covalent organic frameworks (COFs), represent an emerging class of porous
polymers that have received tremendous interest for diverse applications, including
chemical separations, gas storage, catalysis, and optoelectronic and charge storage
devices [ 8 - 14 ], which is because the periodic organic building units offer the poten-
tial for judicious adjustment and post-functionalization. It should be kept in mind
that organic networks show inferior thermal and chemical stability as compared to
inorganic counterparts, and the poorly understood simultaneous polymerization and
crystallization processes further inhibit the corresponding applications.
Deliberate efforts to combine the favorable properties of inorganic units and
organic moieties in a single composite material represent an old challenge that
started the beginning of the industrial era. The intimate integration of organic and
inorganic components to form organic-inorganic hybrid materials constitutes
indeed a remarkable and growing category within the realm of materials science.
Numerous new applications involving advanced materials science are intimately
related to functional hybrids. Accordingly, the combination at the nanosize level of
active inorganic and organic or even bioactive components in a single material has
made accessible an immense new area of materials science that has extraordinary
implications in the development of multifunctional advanced materials. With the
establishment of “ chimie douce ”, Livage opened the gates toward a new galaxy of
materials, organic-inorganic hybrid materials [ 15 - 18 ]. Later on, research turned
toward more sophisticated nanocomposites with higher added values. Noticeably, the
concept of “organic-inorganic hybrid materials” has more to do with chemistry than
with simple physical mixtures. In general, organic-inorganic hybrid materials are
nanocomposites with the inorganic constituents and organic components interacting
intimately at the molecular scale [ 19 , 20 ]. Nowadays the field of organic-inorganic
materials has been extended to other fields as diverse as molecular and supramo-
lecular materials or polymer chemistry. Furthermore, due to the combined physico-
chemical merits of organic and inorganic components, a very significant trend is the
growing research interest toward functional hybrids, which further broadens the field.
Periodic mesoporous organosilicas (PMOs) containing organic siloxane groups
in the silica network have received much attention since 1999 [ 21 - 23 ]. The pre-
dominant process in the formation of siliceous hybrid mesoporous materials