Supercritical fluid processing: a new route for materials synthesis

Supercritical fluids exhibit a range of unusual properties that can be expl oited for new reactions which are qualitatively different from those involv ing classical solid state chemistry. After giving a brief introduction to t hese fluids we describe their use in inorganic chemistry and related fields . We then present two examples concerning different areas of solid stale ch emistry: (i) the formation of novel inorganic nanoparticles; (ii) the prepa ration of new open-structure oxy(hydroxy) fluorides, thus showing the advan tages of this supercritical fluid processing that can be seen as an alterna tive method to regular solution chemistry or solid-gas reactions.