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.

This series presents critical reviews of the present position and future trends in modern chemical research Short and concise reports on chemistry, each written by the world renowned experts Still valid and useful after 5 or 10 years More information as well as the electronic version of the whole content available at: http://link.springer.de/series/tcc/

Inhalt
Amphiphilic Block Copolymers for Templating Applications.- Nanocasting of Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Phases for Metals and Ceramics.- Nanoparticles Made in Mesoporous Solids.- Nanocasting and Nanocoating.- Mineral Liquid Crystals from Self-Assembly of Anisotropic Nanosystems.- Monodisperse Aligned Emulsions from Demixing in Bulk Liquid Crystals.- Templating Vesicles, Microemulsions, and Lyotropic Mesophases by Organic Polymerization Processes.- Rational Material Design Using Au Core-Shell Nanocrystals.