Materials syntheses are generally more complex than syntheses of inorganic or organic compounds, and specific characterization methods play a more important role. Materials synthesis protocols often suffer from unclarities, irreproducibility, lack in detail and lack in standards. The need to change this situation is the main motivation for this book. A number of detailed protocols has been collected, ranging from organic polymers to carbonaceous and ceramic materials, from gels to porous and layered materials and from powders and nanoparticles to films. Preparation methods include intercalation and flux methods, sol-gel processing, templating methods for porous materials, sonochemistry or spray pyrolysis.

Each contribution provides detailed and unambiguous description of the hardware, specific characteristics of the procedure, scope of applicability as well as methods that unequivocally identify and characterize the material and allow checking whether the synthesis was successful.

Silicon and silicon compounds have contributed decisively to the technical progress. Technical applications range from mass commodities to highly sophisticated special materials, from ceramics to polymers, from medicine to microelectronics. To keep pace with scientific and technical developments Germany and Austria have established national priority programs, strongly linked to each other as well as to some Swiss groups. At mid-term of the German program and the end of the first funding period of the Austrian program the results are summarized in this special edition of the journal Monatshefte fur Chemie/Chemical Monthly, giving an excellent overview of the current chemical (and partly physical) acitivites in the joint Austrian/German/Swiss program. The contributions cover topical and interdisciplinary developments in the following areas: * new phenomena in compounds with Si-Si bonds: transitions between molecular compounds and solids, cyclosilanes, polysilanes, silicides, amorphous hydrogenated silicon, * novel silicon-oxygen systems: functionalized sol-gel compounds, spherosiloxanes, siloxene, * compounds with low- and high-coordinated silicon, * new spectroscopic and analytical techniques for the characterization of molecular and polymeric silicon compounds.

Materials syntheses are more complex than syntheses of inorganic or organic compounds. Materials synthesis protocols often suffer from unclarities, irreproducibility, lack in detail and lack in standards. The need to change this situation is the main motivation for this book. It collects a number of detailed protocols, ranging from organic polymers to carbonaceous and ceramic materials, from gels to porous and layered materials and from powders and nanoparticles to films.

The articles in this book summarize the work presented at the mid-term workshop of the COST (European Cooperation in the Fields of Scientific and Technical Research) action on Nanostructured Materials, which was held in October 2001 in Limerick, Ireland. The collection gives an excellent overview of the state-of-the-art, topical research areas in this field, and the progress made by the coordinated research projects. The articles cover synthesis, physical properties and characterization of nanostructured materials, such as magnetic and ferroelectric nanoparticles, nanoparticles in biological systems, metallic nanoparticles, nanocomposites, particle-reinforced polymers, semiconductor nanoparticles and thin films.