For more than twenty years, "soft chemistry" methods for the production of inorganic or hybrid nanomaterials have been attracting considerable interest from both academia and industry. These synthesis methods involve "polymerization" reactions in the broadest sense of the term, carried out at room temperature in aqueous or organic solvents, starting from molecular or nanoparticle precursors. These synthesis conditions are exactly those under which many reactions in organometallic, supramolecular or polymer chemistry are carried out. This type of process (initially developed by solid-state chemists mainly for the elaboration of purely inorganic systems such as glasses, ceramics, mineral-mineral composites, etc.) makes it possible to simultaneously generate organic and inorganic components in the same material, resulting in true organo-mineral or bio-mineral hybrids or nanocomposites. Combining the properties of certain organic or biological molecules with those of mineral compounds in a single material has thus become an achievable goal. On the other hand, natural materials can serve as models to inspire and develop new concepts and "bioinspired strategies" in hybrid materials engineering.
In this context, the irruption of the hybrid world into advanced technologies has already begun. Its amplification seems inevitable, given a number of easily identifiable factors: the technical or economic limitations that existing solutions always come up against, and the inexhaustible abundance of hybrid structures and their properties. This abundance is being tamed and guided by the development of a predictive approach to molecular engineering, and by the increasingly perceptible establishment of a deep-rooted current of rapprochement on this theme between physicists and chemists, a trend which is extending to biology. This first bouquet of lectures has been dedicated to describing and discussing the field of hybrid materials as a whole. This overview will establish the scientific and pedagogical basis and concepts from which we will develop more specifically, in the coming years, the many facets of this particularly rich disciplinary field.