Advances in characterisation methods for sol-gel derived materials: High resolution solid state nuclear magnetic resonance

The objective of this paper is to discuss the recent advances in high resolution solid state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) to characterise sol-gel derived materials. The first part will be focused on methods to describe M-i-O-M-j connectivities in sol-gel networks. After a brief review on techniques based on scalar J-coupling, we will focus on the use of O-17 solid state NMR experiments. Then in a second part, techniques to probe through-space interactions in hybrid networks will be described, with a particular emphasis on the use of high resolution H-1 solid state NMR sequences and related two-dimensional homonuclear or heteronuclear correlations.