| Abstract: | We describe the sol-gel synthesis of a new family of organic-inorganic hybrid materials, in which various vinylpolymers are covalently bonded to and uniformly distributed in inorganic oxide matrices. The materials can be tailored tohave both good toughness and hardness while maintaining excellent optical transparency. Doping the sol-gel metal oxideswith optically active compounds such as D-glucose results in new optical rotatory composite materials. Removal of thedopant compounds from the composites affords mesoporous oxide materials, which represents a new, nonsurfactant-templated route to mesoporous molecular sieves. We have successfully immobilized a series of enzymes and other bioactiveagents in mesoporous materials. Catalytical activities of the enzyme encapsulated in mesoporous materials were found to bemuch higher than those encapsulated in microporous materials. |
