The small size enhances the effective surface and confinement contributions, driving material properties away from the bulk even though relying strongly on interplays between physics and chemistry. Successful approaches of solution chemistry include the fabrication of a large range of inorganic nanocolloids with for instance a large control over geometrical shapes (spheres, rods, tube, tetrapodes, etc), reproducible luminescence efficiency as high as 85%, or room-temperature ferromagnetism. Among the most promising advanced materials are hetero nanostructures made with two or more different materials engineered in core-shell structures or grafted to one another and sometimes even providing mixed dimensionality (spherical and elongated) to the final nanoparticles.

In addition, nPs are now mature enough to be inserted into optoelectronic devices such as sensors, LEDs, solar cells, transistors, … promising cheaper processes, higher efficiencies, flexible devices, or even new applications such as textile electronics.

We do not aim at addressing all of these exciting topics but by combining our expertise, resources and collaborations, we "cherry pick" those we think we can have a contribution to.

Dendrimers have indeed recently received considerable attention as specific properties are expected to arise from their highly branched and symmetric architecture. In addition to the development of different synthetic approaches which lead to ever more complex dendrimers, various applications are currently under investigation which include catalysis, encapsulation and drug delivery, nano- / ultra-filtration and phase transfer, as well as nanomaterial preparation. Over the past few years, dendritic molecules have also been successfully designed to create a new class of materials for organic light harvesting systems as well as light emitting diodes and photoactive devices. For instance, successful syntheses and characterizations of a few red, green and blue emitting dendritic molecules have recently been reported in the literature, using independent alterations of the core, the branches (dendrons) and the external surface groups. This has been shown to allow tuning of the emission spectra as well as favoring energy transfer between the core and the periphery, while preventing both dye molecule aggregation and excimer formation, and preserving simple solution processing for future applications. Other dendrimer architectures with, for instance, chromophores located both on the dendrons and in the core have also been extensively investigated, revealing, for instance, intramolecular energy and electron transfer, along with intramolecular interactions leading to excimer formation and either enhancement or quenching of the photoluminescence, depending upon the system under investigation.