Hybrid Glasses: From Metal Organic Frameworks and Co-ordination Polymers to Hybrid Organic Inorganic Perovskites

In this review, we introduce the structural variety of glasses derived from metal organic frameworks, coordination polymers, and hybrid perovskites, in each case stressing the atomic building blocks from which non-crystalline networks are assembled. We describe many ways of producing hybrid glasses, which, irrespective of their novelty, call on an interestingly wide variety of glass-forming methods, from standard melt-quenching to thermal and pressure induced amorphization and ball milling. These raise issues currently fundamental to glass science, not least the ubiquitous influence of mechanical stability on melting, temperature and pressure-induced amorphization, and glass-forming ability. Characterizing hybrid glasses calls on the full range of techniques available, ranging from pair distribution function analysis, neutron and synchrotron radiation methods, differential scanning calorimetry, Raman spectroscopy, to atomistic computer simulation. By considering the different groups of organic–inorganic glass formers together, we are able to throw light on the role of crystalline compressibility on the reversibility of amorphization and on the demarcation between the brittleness and ductility of melt-quenched glasses. Furthermore, in looking at the structural and dynamic properties of hybrid glasses formed from hybrid zeolitic frameworks to perovskites, and the liquids they are condensed from, we anticipate how compositions can be extended and ways in which the physics of this exciting new branch of glass science can be further developed.