Development and Application of Functional Hybrid Composite Materials

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Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and Hybrid organic inorganic perovskites (HOIP) are both classes of hybrid materials (materials containing both organic and inorganic components) which have had growing interest in recent years. Historically, work on these types of materials has primarily focussed on their crystalline forms, until recently, where studies have shown that their amorphous and glassy states can also be accessed through a range of methods including, but not limited to, melt-quenching and mechanochemical methods. These discoveries have led to the introduction of a new category of glass materials, hybrid glasses, which lie between the domains of both inorganic and organic glasses. Although these materials are amorphous by definition, studies have shown that short range order can still be retained suggesting that properties possessed by the crystalline forms may be carried over during the structure transformations. This new area of materials chemistry offers possible applications in gas storage and separation, catalysis and optical applications.Although the field of glass chemistry is diverse in itself with a range of applications, a wider and more varied range of materials can be developed by considering composites of glasses with other solid-state materials. Careful choice of the type and quantities of constituent parts which make up these composites introduces a great degree of control and subsequently the ability to tailor underlying chemistries and specific material properties to better suit targeted applications.The aim of this project is to study the synthesis and properties of composite materials based upon hybrid glasses. The nature of composite formation and resulting material properties will be explored by creating a diverse range of composite materials, such as glass ceramic analogues and glass-carbon composites. Diffraction techniques and thermo-analytical methods such as powder x-ray diffraction (PXRD); differential scanning calorimetry (DSC); and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) will be used to investigate the initial formation of the glasses and their composites. Once formed, the bulk properties of the materials will be probed by use of techniques such as gas sorption and indentation with an aim at identifying potential future applications.