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The aim of this review article on recent developments of mechanochemistry (nowadays established as a part of chemistry) is to provide a comprehensive overview of advances achieved in the field of atomistic processes, phase transformations, simple and multicomponent nanosystems and peculiarities of mechanochemical reactions. Industrial aspects with successful penetration into fields like materials engineering, heterogeneous catalysis and extractive metallurgy are also reviewed. The hallmarks of mechanochemistry include influencing reactivity of solids by the presence of solid-state defects, interphases and relaxation phenomena, enabling processes to take place under non-equilibrium conditions, creating a well-crystallized core of nanoparticles with disordered near-surface shell regions and performing simple dry time-convenient one-step syntheses. Underlying these hallmarks are technological consequences like preparing new nanomaterials with the desired properties or producing these materials in a reproducible way with high yield and under simple and easy operating conditions. The last but not least hallmark is enabling work under environmentally friendly and essentially waste-free conditions (822 references).

Master plot methods based on the integral and/or the differential forms of the kinetic equation describing solid-state reactions have been redefined by using the concept of the generalized time, θ, introduced by Ozawa. This redefinition permits the application of these master plots to the kinetic analysis of solid-state reactions, whatever the type of temperature program used for recording the experimental data. In isothermal conditions, a single curve is enough to construct the experimental master plots. In nonisothermal conditions, the knowledge of both α as a function of temperature and activation energy is required for calculating the master plot curves from the experimental data. Practical usefulness of the present master plot methods is examined, and exemplified by being applied to the thermal decomposition of ZnCO3 under isothermal, linear nonisothermal, and nonlinear nonisothermal conditions.