The Emerging Art of Solid-State Synthesis

Solid-state chemists are exploring new routes to synthesizing useful compounds, including self-assembly, by which complex structures form spontaneously from simpler ones. Parkinson provides background and comment on a research report by Noh et al . in this issue ( p. 1181 ) that describes a method of depositing reactants on a substrate at low temperature; once the starting materials are in place, the temperature is increased, allowing the reaction to proceed.