Combinatorial chemistry - The emperor's new clothes?

Considering the increasing pressures and constraints on research and develo pment towards focussed innovation, the prospects of new fast and cost-effec tive approaches addressing the many challenges faced in more rapidly develo ping next generation products are expected to be very significant. The appl ication of the new methodologies of combinatorial chemistry to materials di scovery and development, though facing special challenges, has now been dem onstrated in the hydrothermal synthesis of a series of aluminophosphate mat erials. Using this approach an extensive study of complex multi-component s ystems was easily achieved, demonstrating the highly reproducible experimen tal conditions that allows efficient screening of phase composition based o n X-ray diffraction analysis. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.