We review past and recent progress in Nano-Imprint Lithography (NIL) methods to (nano-) structure inorganic materials from sol-gel liquid formulations and colloidal suspensions onto a surface. This technique, first inspired by embossing techniques, was developed for soft polymer processing, as final or intermediate materials, but is today fully adapted to hard inorganic materials with high dielectric constant, such as metal oxides, with countless chemical compositions provided by the sol-gel chemistry. Consequently, NIL has become a versatile, high throughput, and highly precise microfabrication method that is mature for lab developments and scaling up. We first describe the state-of-the-art in nanofabrication methods and the plethora of approaches developed in the last decades to imprint metal oxides from inorganic solutions. These are discussed and compared in terms of performances, issues, and ease of implementation. The final part is devoted to relevant applications in domains of interest. Generalities on Nano fabrication techniques and NILFrom the early ages, technics to cut, sculpt, etch, mold, assemble pieces of matter have been developed and constantly optimized to satisfy the growing demand for functional materials. Since the inception of nanotechnology, these operations have to be mastered at the nanoscale. For these tasks, many top-down and bottom-up methods exist. However, they do not simultaneously fulfill all the necessary criteria of performance such as spatial resolution, pattern complexity, hierarchy, scalability, dimensionality, costeffectiveness, a span of processable materials. Thus, motivations to optimize them and develop new ones persist as a flourishing domain of research and development.Many materials exhibiting various intrinsic properties (mechanical, chemical, electrical, optical, thermal, etc.) are exploited in numberless functions once nanostructured onto a surface. Amongst them, metal oxides are extremely valuable for their extreme chemical, mechanical and thermal stability and range of physicalchemical properties. Thanks to its hardness, chemical inertness, transparency and low background fluorescence, glass is one of the preferred choices for micro-and nano-fluidics device fabrication. In photonics, metasurfaces require optical properties that are found in dielectrics such as SiO2 often combined with high index dielectric TiO2 or (plasmonic) gold 1 . For nano-electronics, silica remains one of the key

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) have seen a fast development as drug delivery carriers thanks to their tunable porosity and high loading capacity. The employ of MSNs in biomedical applications requires a good understanding of their degradation behavior both to control drug release and to assess possible toxicity issues on human health. In this work, we study mesoporous silica degradation in biologically relevant conditions through in situ ellipsometry on model mesoporous nanoparticle or continuous thin films, in buffer solution and in media containing proteins. In order to shed light on the structure/dissolution relationship, we performed dissolution experiments far from soluble silicate species saturation. Via a complete decorrelation of dissolution and diffusion contributions, we proved unambiguously that surface area of silica vectors is the main parameter influencing dissolution kinetics, while thermal treatment and open mesoporous network architecture have a minor impact. As a logical consequence of our dissolution model, we proved that the dissolution lag-time can be promoted by selective blocking of the mesopores that limits the access to the mesoporous internal surface. This study was broadened by studying the impact of the organosilanes in the silica structure, of the presence of residual structuring agents, and of the chemical composition of the dissolution medium. The presence of albumin at blood concentration was found affecting drastically the dissolution kinetics of the mesoporous structure, acting as a diffusion barrier. Globally, we could identify the main factors affecting mesoporous silica materials degradation and proved that we can tune their structure and composition for adjusting dissolution kinetics in order to achieve efficient drug delivery.