Inorganic／organic nano-composite materials exhibit enhanced performance due to the nano-size effect of the inorganic phase dispersed in the organic matrix．The conventional way to prepare nano-composite materials is to mix nano-dimensional inorganic particles into a polymer matrix．The inorganic particles

however

are usually nonhomogeneously dispersed because on energy considerations the aggregation of the inorganic particles is favored．In addition

the distinct difference in surface characters between the discontinuous inorganic phase and continuous organic matrix has an adverse effect on the dispersion of the former．The design of a novel inorganic-organic nano-composite structure is thus put forward in this work．By taking advantage of the nano-sized pore diameter and wall thickness

MCM-48 is proposed as the inorganic component of the novel inorganic-organic nano-composite structure．and the nano-composite structure is proposed to be formed through in-situ self-assembly of inorganic silica precursors and organic template．The effects of the conditions including the concentration of alkali solution

pre—hydrolysis step

organic/inorganic molar ratio

pre-assembly time and pre-assembly temperature on the self-assembly have been investigated．The proposed nano-composite structure can be formed with CTABr as the organic template and TEOS as the inorganic precursors．The novel aspect of this nano-composite structure is that the organic phase in the nano-sized pores is isolated by the inorganic phase．The organic template extends along the channels to the openings and is beneficial to the dispersivity of nano-composite particles in both polar and non-polar medium such as water and toluene．The content of the organic template can be varied to optimise the properties of the nano-composites．The inorganic-organic nano-composite particles are expected to be favorable to the interaction bteween the nano-composite structure and a bulk polymer matrix．