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favorable chemical and physical stabilities, hybrid materials on the basis of the
organically modified clays represented an indispensable part of human creation
and were gradually employed along the history of artistic, social, industrial, and
commercial uses [
2
,
3
]. In America for instance, the ancient Maya site contained
an impressive collection of fresco paintings characterized by bright blue and ocher
colors, which was known as Maya blue. This pigment was resulted from the intro-
duction of a natural organic dye (blue indigo) into the channels of microfibrous
clay (palygorskite) [
4
]. In China, hybrid clays allowed the production of very thin
ceramics thanks to the intercalation of urea inside the interlayer space, facilitating
the further delamination which enhanced the resulting plasticity [
5
].
Organic-inorganic hybrids presented a strong scientific and industrial develop-
ment over the twentieth century, during which the refined analytical methods and
techniques allowed researchers to understand the true natures and structures. The
notion of mixing organic and inorganic components has been part of the manu-
facturing technologies since 1940s [
6
]. For example, silicones, nanopigments sus-
pended in organic mixtures, and organically templated zeolites provided a diversity
of functional hybrid materials that have found application potential in various
industrial and scientific research fields. Nonetheless, the concept “hybrid materials”
was not proposed at that time. At the end of 1950s, several scientific communities
made valuable contributions to the domain of mixed organic-inorganic compounds,
which concerned the intercalation of organic units inside the clay and inorganic
lamellar compounds [
7
,
8
]. With the establishment of “
chimie douce,
” Livage
opened the gates toward a new galaxy of materials in the middle 1980s, namely
hybrid materials [
9
-
13
], and the concept of “organic-inorganic hybrid nanocom-
posites” exploded in the 1990s [
14
,
15
]. The period between 1980 and 1995 was
particularly fruitful due to the scientific melting pot resulting from the establishment
of solgel chemistry (Fig.
2.1
). The meeting between material scientists committing
to glass and ceramics with chemists mainly working on polymers promoted the tre-
mendous growth in creating a mass of mixed organic-inorganic composites.
Due to the mild conditions involved in the solgel process, solgel-derived
siliceous species can be further modified or functionalized with polymers,
Fig. 2.1
Representative events of the development history for hybrid and porous materials
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