Aspects of chemistry and chemical processing of organically modified ceramics

Abstract

For the synthesis of composites on a nano or molecular level, chemical or physical methods have to be used since mechanical procedures cannot be employed for these systems. If organics have tobe included, low temperature processing has to be used for the synthesis of the inorganic component in order not to damage the organic component. Sol-gel techniques are an appropriate means to synthesize oxidic networks by soft chemistry, and various systems of organically modified ceramics (ORMOCERs) have been developed so far. It has been shown that the synthesis parameter can be used to tailor the material properties of ORMOCERs and several examples of material developments will be given.