'Chimie douce': A land of opportunities for the designed construction of functional inorganic and hybrid organic-inorganic nanomaterials

“Chimie douce” based strategies allow, through the deep knowledge of materials chemistry and processing, the birth of the molecular engineering of nanomaterials. This feature article will highlight some of the main research accomplishments we have performed during the last years. We describe successively the design and properties of: sol–gel derived hybrids, Nano Building Blocks (NBBs) based hybrid materials, nanostructured porous materials proceeds as thin films and ultra-thin films, aerosol processed mesoporous powders and finally hierarchically structured materials. The importance of the control of the hybrid interfaces via the use of modern tools as DOSY NMR, SAXS, WAXS, Ellipsometry that are very useful to evaluate in situ the hybrid interfaces and the self-assembly processes is emphasized. Some examples of the optical, photocatalytic, electrochemical and mechanical properties of the resulting inorganic or hybrid nanomaterials are also presented.