Since the rise of organometallic chemistry, marked by the discovery of the
molecular structure and unusual reactivity of ferrocene about five decades
ago, one of the principal driving forces behind it has been the application of
newly gained fundamental knowledge about metal–carbon bonds to improve
and extend the “tool box” for selective organic synthesis in a very general and
broad sense. Homogeneous catalysis is a true success story of organometallic
chemistry,adisciplinethat hasstructuredandcombinedinorganicandorganic
chemistry to an unprecedented extent. In parallel, the chemistry of metalloorganic
coordination compounds (MOCs) – molecular compounds without
direct M–C bonds but containing hydrocarbon moieties or substituents at the
ligator atoms – has developed along the lines of Werner-type classical coordination
chemistry and even developed beyond its relevance to biochemistry
and molecular biology. Across the borders of molecular chemistry, materials
research is bridging the molecular sciences with condensed matter and solid
state chemistry as well as physics and engineering disciplines. The advent of
the microelectronic industry and information technology, together with the
intrinsic demand for the miniaturisation of devices down to the ultimate limits
given by fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, has undoubtedly greatly
stimulated the merger of physics and chemistry in nanospace, which we are all
currently witnessing. One option that chemistry offers this self-accelerating
enterprise is certainly organometallic and metallo-organic molecular precursors,
compounds that are themselves particularly useful or even specifically
engineered for the fabrication and processing of materials and functional architectures
made therefrom, no matter if we are talking about micro- and
nanosized devices or about macrosystems. The sub-discipline of inorganic
molecular chemistry dealing with that option is called precursor chemistry.