Combinatorial chemistry – The emperor's new clothes?

Considering the increasing pressures and constraints on research and development towards focussed innovation, the prospects of new fast and cost-effective approaches addressing the many challenges faced in more rapidly developing next generation products are expected to be very significant. The application of the new methodologies of combinatorial chemistry to materials discovery and development, though facing special challenges, has now been demonstrated in the hydrothermal synthesis of a series of aluminophosphate materials. Using this approach an extensive study of complex multi-component systems was easily achieved, demonstrating the highly reproducible experimental conditions that allows efficient screening of phase composition based on X-ray diffraction analysis.