These proceedings are of an international symposium - Chimie Douce - held in Nantes, France, September 1993. In recent years, entirely new ways of thinking have appeared in solid-state chemistry. The term "soft chemistry" is often applied in a general manner to refer to these new routes which concern a variety of different areas such as sol-gel processes, reactions dealing with intercalation-deintercalation, pillaring-grafting and exchange-condensation. The purpose of this book is to formulate some concepts and general guidelines in soft chemistry.
