This paper describes approaches developed for the preparation and also the characterization of innovative inorganic or hybrid membrane materials. Soft chemistry routes, sol-gel methods and plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) are used to get tailor-made layers with different architectures. The infiltrated composite membranes are first examined. They exhibit a good thermo-mechanical resistance, a low sensitivity to the presence of defects, a relatively high flow resistance and are attractive for catalytic contactor applications. Preliminary results on supported ceramic membranes with a hierarchical porosity are then presented. Finally, examples are given to illustrate the interest of the PECVD route and of plasma post-treatments for preparing very thin hybrid separative layers. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.