Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry (CCC), published in 1987, was intended to give a con￾temporary overview of the field. The goal was to provide both a convenient first source of
information and a stimulus for further advances in the field.
In Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry II (CCC2) we have adopted the same general approach.
Developments in coordination chemistry since 1982 are surveyed in an authoritative and critical
manner taking into account important new trends in biology, materials science, and other areas.
As in many areas of science, it is impossible to provide a totally comprehensive review – the field
has grown enormously in the past 20 years. Consequently, our intention is to provide the readers of
the series with the most reliable and informative background information on particular areas of
coordination chemistry based on key primary and secondary references. In doing so we recognize
that those readers will be researchers at all levels including students, non-experts from other areas of
science, and industrial chemists. Our hope is that CCC2 will provide a clear overview, at a state-of￾the-art level, of those areas that the Editors-in-Chief and the Volume Editors believe to be especially
important and/or of high relevance to future developments.