In relation to some inorganic membranes, polymeric membranes have relatively low separation performance. However, the processing flexibility and low cost of polymers still make them highly attractive for many industrial separation applications. Polymer–inorganic hybrid membranes constitute an emerging research field and have been recently developed to improve the separation properties of polyme...

Calcination of lysozyme-silica hybrid hollow particles gives novel cage-like hollow spherical silicas with differently patterned through-holes on their shell structure.

The coating of solid surfaces with inorganic materials is a promising approach not only to impart various functionalities but also to modify physicochemical properties that are affected by the geometry/structure of the coating. In this study, a silica-hexadecyltrimethylammonium (silica-CTA) hybrid layer was deposited on monodispersed spherical particles composed of titania and octadecylamine (t...

Homogeneous poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)–silica gel polymer hybrids were prepared by in-situ hydrolysis of poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) in a sol– gel reaction mixture with tetramethoxysilane (TMOS). The degree of hydrolysis was evaluated by FTIR and C CP/MAS NMR; it increased with an increase in the acid catalyst and reached 85% with 1.6 ml of 0.1 M HCl. The homogeneity of the polymer hybrids obtain...

Core-shell silica microspheres with a nanocellulose derivative in the hybrid shell were successfully prepared as a chiral stationary phase by a layer-by-layer self-assembly method. The hybrid shell assembled on the silica core was formed using a surfactant as template by the copolymerization reaction of tetraethyl orthosilicate and the nanocellulose derivative bearing triethoxysilyl and 3,5-dim...

Transparent Nonlinear Optical (NLO) inorganic/organic (polyimide/silica) hybrid composites with covalent links between the inorganic and the organic networks were prepared by the sol-gel method. The silica content in the hybrid films was varied from 0 to 22.5/wt%. The prepared PI hybrids were characterized by IR, UV-Vis, Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electr...

Thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes containing MCM-41 silica nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by the interfacial polymerization (IP) process. An m-phenylenediamine (MPD) aqueous solution and an organic phase with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) dissolved in isooctane were used in the IP reaction, occurring on a nanoporous polysulfone (PSU) support layer. Isooctane was introduced as the organic...

Biocompatible silica-based mesoporous materials, which present high surface areas combined with uniform distribution of nanopores, can be organized in functional nanopatterns for a number of applications. However, silica is by essence an electrically insulating material which precludes applications for electro-chemical devices. The formation of hybrid electroactive silica nanostructures is thus...