Soft chemistry (also known as chimie douce) is a type of
chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
that uses reactions at ambient temperature in open reaction vessels with reactions similar to those occurring in biological systems.
Aims
The aim of the soft chemistry is to synthesize
materials
A material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their ge ...
,
drawing capacity of living beings - more or less basic - such as
diatoms
A diatom (Neo-Latin ''diatoma'') is any member of a large group comprising several Genus, genera of algae, specifically microalgae, found in the oceans, waterways and soils of the world. Living diatoms make up a significant portion of Earth's B ...
capable of producing glass from
silicate
A silicate is any member of a family of polyatomic anions consisting of silicon and oxygen, usually with the general formula , where . The family includes orthosilicate (), metasilicate (), and pyrosilicate (, ). The name is also used ...
s dissolved. It is a new branch of materials science that differs from conventional solid-state chemistry and its application to the intense energy to explore the chemical inventiveness of the living world. This specialty emerged in the 1980s around the label of "chimie douce", which was first published by the French chemist,
Jacques Livage
Jacques Livage (born 26 October 1938 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French chemist holding the chair of condensed matter chemistry at the Collège de France and a member of the Académie des sciences.
Biography
In 1960, he obtained an engineering de ...
in ''Le Monde'', 26 October 1977.
[J. Livage, "Vers une chimie écologique. Quand l’air et l’eau remplacent le pétrole", Le Monde (1977) October 26th] French hits, the term ''soft chemistry'' is employed as such in the early twenty-first century in
scientific publications
Scientific literature encompasses a vast body of academic papers that spans various disciplines within the natural and social sciences. It primarily consists of academic papers that present original empirical research and theoretical con ...
, English and others. His mode of synthesis is similar generally for reactions involved in the
polymerization
In polymer chemistry, polymerization (American English), or polymerisation (British English), is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form polymer chains or three-dimensional networks. There are many fo ...
s based on organic and the establishment of
solution
Solution may refer to:
* Solution (chemistry), a mixture where one substance is dissolved in another
* Solution (equation), in mathematics
** Numerical solution, in numerical analysis, approximate solutions within specified error bounds
* Solu ...
s reactive energy intake without essential
polycondensation
In polymer chemistry, condensation polymers are any kind of polymers whose process of polymerization involves a condensation reaction (i.e. a small molecule, such as water or methanol, is produced as a byproduct). Natural proteins as well as s ...
. The fundamental interest of this kind of polymerization mineral obtained at room temperature is to preserve organic molecules or microorganisms that wishes to fit. The products obtained by means of the so-called ''soft chemistry''
sol-gel can be stored in several types:
* mineral structures of various qualities (smoothness, uniformity, etc.)
* mixed structures combining inorganic and organic molecules on mineral structures
*
wrapper complex molecules and even
microorganisms
A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in ...
maintaining or optimizing their beneficial characteristics.
The early results have included the creation of glasses and
ceramic
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...
with new properties. These different structures are more or less composite mobilized a wide range of applications ranging from health to the needs of the conquest of space. Beyond its mode of synthesis, a compound with the label ''soft chemistry'' combines the advantages of the mineral (resistance, transparency, repetition patterns, etc.) and now exploring the potential of the
biochemistry
Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...
and
organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...
(interface with the organic world, reactivity, synthesis capability, etc.). According to its practitioners, "soft chemistry" is only in its early success and opens up vast prospects.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Soft Chemistry
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Chemical synthesis
Biomimetics