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The field of polyoxometalates (POMs), in recent times, has entered a new arena of ‘‘soft’’-supramolecular interactions, crossing the molecular regime of covalent bonds. The structures resulting from such ‘‘soft’’-supramolecular interactions are much larger (10–500 nm in diameter), showing soft-matter properties. These structures are termed as Soft Oxometalates.

Introduction
Ever since the publication of the seminal work by Müller[2] and later by Liu,[3] an array of polyoxometalate (POM) structures at the border of translational periodicity has been discovered that calls for attention. Crossing the limits of translational periodicity, these structures share some unique physical properties. For instance, they scatter light, possess a diffuse and mobile boundary, and have two phases (a dispersed and a dispersive phase), and show responsiveness to the change of dielectric constant of the dispersing media. Owing to such properties reminiscent of soft matter, following de Gennes pioneering definition of soft-matter,[4] this micro-review proposes to call these ‘‘soft’’ structures of POMs soft oxometalates (SOMs). [Note: These structures may also be called ‘‘soft polyoxometalates,’’ which would be synonymous with the name soft oxometalates (SOMs), which is used in this review. The author, however, believes the name ‘‘soft oxometalates’’ is more generic than ‘‘soft polyoxometalates.’’ The reason is the basic oxometalate building blocks. The structures reported in this comment are all (mostly) super-structures of metal-oxides with a negative charge or oxometalates.[1a] The name ‘‘polyoxometalates,’’ however, was historically coined to indicate single molecular structures with ‘‘many’’ oxometalates.[1a] The present review sets out to give a name to a burgeoning field where the super-structures are primarily oxo-metalates in a supramolecular sense of the term. Hence, although the name polyoxometalates (POMs) is more appropriate to refer to the structures at a more single molecular regime, soft-oxometalates (SOMs) will describe oxometalate super-structures more at supra-molecular and soft polymer-colloidal length-scale regimes.] This very brief account (with an apology to many other active workers in this very diverse and active field) highlights a few examples of relatively recent works and those of the author’s own, which may be classified as soft oxometalates. The soft oxometalates may further be grouped in two categories: Spontaneously Formed Soft Oxometalates (SoFoSOMs) and Designed Soft Oxometalates (DeSOMs). Each category will be discussed with examples. (This micro-overview, however, does not give a recent state-of-the-art description of the fascinating field of POMs. Interested readers may refer to reference.[1])