Designed hybrid organic-inorganic nanocomposites from functional nanobuilding blocks

This article describes hybrid materials and systems in which the core integ rity of inorganic nanobuilding blocks (NBBs) is preserved and reviews the m ain synthetic procedures presented in the literature. The relation between the NBB and the resulting hybrid networks is discussed for several striking examples: silicon and tin oxo clusters, polyoxometalates, and transition m etal-oxo-based clusters. This approach is extended to nanoparticule-based h ybrids. The chemical strategies offered by the coupling of soft chemistry p rocesses and this approach based on functional NBBs allows, through an inte lligent and tuned coding, to develop a new vectorial chemistry that is able to direct the assembly of a large variety of structurally well-defined clu sters or nanoparticles into complex architectures.