ABSTRACT
Imprinting matrices can play crucial roles in enhancing the imprinting e¡ect through control of the environment surrounding the imprinting sites [1^9].This surrounding environment can be viewed as the second coordination shell to the templatemolecules or ions, which is shown schematically in Fig. 1. Until now, the main matrices employed in molecular imprinting have been either organic or inorganic polymers [1^4, 10^15]. Cross-linked polymethacrylate is an example of an organic-imprinting matrix, while silica sol^gel glass represents a popular inorganic-imprinting matrix (see Chapter 11 for imprinting in inorganic matrices). In this chapter, we discuss a relatively new type of matrix based on hybrid materials [6^8, 16^18].
