Electron Microscopy Characterization of Soft Matter Materials
A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 April 2026 | Viewed by 185
Special Issue Editors
Interests: cryoEM; cryoET; multi-mclae imaging; soft matter materials
Interests: liquid crystals; molecular/ionic liquids; soft matter; bulk structure and thin layer morphology; X-ray scattering/diffraction; neutron scattering; thermal properties
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Soft matter materials—encompassing polymers, biomaterials, liquid crystals, and colloids—are foundational to technological progress in medicine, energy, and sustainability. Their properties are dictated by nanoscale structure, morphology, and composition. However, characterizing these materials with electron microscopy (EM) is profoundly challenging due to their inherent beam sensitivity and low contrast, often leading to artifacts that misrepresent their true native state.
Traditional electron microscopy techniques, while powerful, can induce significant beam damage, altering or destroying the very structures we seek to observe. This has historically created a gap between a material's native state and its imaged morphology. The exciting aim of this Special Issue is to bridge this gap. We seek to highlight cutting-edge advances in EM that overcome these challenges, such as cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) for vitrified hydrogels and biological complexes, low-dose (S)TEM techniques for beam-sensitive organic crystals, and advanced volume imaging (e.g., FIB-SEM) for 3D morphological analysis. We also emphasize the indispensable role of associated computational methods. The complexity and scale of modern EM data necessitate advanced computing for full interpretation. We therefore seek contributions that leverage deep learning and artificial intelligence for tasks such as super-resolution reconstruction, noise reduction, automated segmentation of complex morphologies, and the extraction of quantitative features from large datasets. Furthermore, we welcome research on advanced image analysis, 3D tomographic reconstruction, and data management strategies that unlock meaningful information from EM data.
This issue will serve as a forum for research that bridges state-of-the-art EM instrumentation with cutting-edge computational analytics. Our goal is to showcase how the combined power of these fields is revolutionizing our understanding of structure-property relationships in soft matter, pushing the boundaries of discovery from what we can see to what we can understand.
Dr. Yanan Zhu
Dr. Benoit Heinrich
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-em)
- low-dose electron microscopy
- focused ion beam sem (fib-sem)
- tomography
- beam-sensitive materials
- nanostructure characterization
- structure-property relationships
- deep learning segmentation
- image processing
- 3D reconstruction
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