Sol–gel chemistry: from self-assembly to complex materials

Sol–gel appears nowadays as a mature branch of chemistry with much of the basic research that has been exploited for the most part. The possibility of combining sol–gel with supramolecular chemistry has, however, open almost endless possibilities of new applications of sol–gel processes which have therefore become a fundamental tool of nano-chemistry. We have briefly reviewed the work done in our laboratory in this field, from self-assembly, with a description of the analytical in situ techniques that we have developed up to the design of nanomaterials of increasing complexity.