Colloid Chemistry I

Over the last forty years,good old-fashioned colloid chemistry has undergone something of a revolution,transforming itself from little more than a collection of qualitative observations of the macroscopic behaviour of some complex s- tems into a discipline with a solid theoretical foundation and a whole toolbox of new chemical techniques.It can now boast a set of concepts which go a long way towards providing an understanding of the many strange and interesting beh- iour patterns exhibited by natural and artificial systems on the mesoscale. In other words: colloid chemists have acquired a great deal of experience in the generation and control of matter with tools that are specific on a scale of some nanometers to micrometers.Modern concepts such as self-organisation,hier- chical set-up of materials,nanoparticles,functional surface engineering,int- facing and cross-talk of complex chemical objects,all of which are now in the toolbox of this 90-year old science. It is the aim of the present issue of Topics in Current Chemistry to highlight some of the most attractive recent developments in colloid chemistry which are expected to have broader relevance and to be interesting to a more general readership.The contributions focus both on tools and procedures as well as on potential applications.