Mineral Crystallinity

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to contribute a paper to this Special Issue concerning the degree of structural order in a solid. The crystallinity is, despite frequent usage of the term, not always uniformly interpreted. It is often confused with particle size distribution and structural perfection. The study of mineral crystallinity has always been limited by our technical ability to infer the arrangement of atoms in a crystalline structure. Recently, it appears that a new term should be taken into the consideration, namely the shape (habit) of the crystallites, since this greatly influences the orientation of crystallites in natural and artificial mixtures.

The Special Issue on “Mineral Crystallinity” aims to provide a broad description of the results in different fields, considering the term crystallinity in the broadest meaning of the term comprising the chemical, physical, biological, mineralogical, petrological environmental and pedological scientific aspects. For example, in material science, the degree of crystallinity of bone's mineral phase is considered a parameter which is an overall indicator of mineral crystal size and stoichiometric perfection. In environmental mineralogy, a low degree of mineral crystallinity facilitates the non-stoichiometric incorporation of foreign elements in the crystal lattice. In petrography, the degree of crystallinity of clay minerals (such as illite and chlorite) has proved a useful method for establishing the degree of very low grade metamorphism mudstones and shales.

Scientists working in a wide range of disciplines are invited to contribute to this cause.

The topics summarized under the keywords cover broad examples of the greater number of sub-topics that should be borne in mind.

Dr. Cristina Carbone
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crystals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.