“…Inorganic and organic-inorganic sol-gel materials have many applications in diverse fields such optics, electronics, ionics, mechanics, energy, environment and biology [8,9], separation, catalysis and sensing F o r P e e r R e v i e w [10][11][12][13][14][15], electrochemistry [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], functional smart materials and corrosion protection coatings [8,9,25,26] or biomaterials and biomedical applications [9,[27][28][29][30]. The sol-gel route, originally directed towards the synthesis of purely inorganic materials, is increasingly being extended to the preparation of organic-inorganic hybrid materials.…”