Metal fluorides are currently underused compared to their metal oxide cousins, which have proven to have wide applications such as catalysis. This may be because only a few metal fluorides, such as calcium fluoride, occur in nature and so all metal fluorides, aside from CaF, must be made synthetically. 

In fact, metal fluorides have shown to be superior to metal oxides in some fields. For example, solid metal fluoride catalysts are more active and more stable in some heterogeneous reactions. Therefore new synthetic routes to metal fluorides need to be developed to allow their properties to be improved.

In their Dalton Transactions Perspective, Erhard Kemnitz and Stephan Rüdiger, discuss the recently developed fluorolytic sol-gel route to useful high surface-area metal fluorides. They also discuss new applications for nano-sized metal fluorides stemming from this method, such as oxide fluoride preparation, heterogeneous catalysis and optics applications and energy storage possibilities. 

This sol-gel fluorolysis synthesis of metal fluorides shows how nanotechnology can alter the materials' properties thus resulting in applications not previously imagined. Despite all progress already achieved there are lots of new areas of application waiting to be discovered, says Kemnitz.