Recent Advances in Polymeric Cryogels

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Gels on Recent Advances in Polymeric Cryogels.

Polymeric cryogels have long been known as soft solid materials with unceasing interest given by their perhaps endless application potential. Cryogels can exhibit many unique properties among gels, including a highly interconnected macroporous structure, a supreme solvent-adsorption capacity (water-adsorption in the case of hydrogels), excellent shape-memory properties, and injectability.

It was Prof. Vladimir I. Lozinsky who, nearly 40 years ago, started to systematically study how various polymeric systems form hydrogels in frozen conditions. However, it took a long time for cryogels to gain more focus.

How is it these days? Within the last 3 years, more than 500 articles on cryogels have been published, which is about 3 times more than 10 years ago and 30 times more than 2 decades ago. Publications about polymeric cryogels were cited more frequently by 80% in the last year than three years ago. These numbers prove that the topic is blooming and that cryogels are gaining more and more attention. Cryogels found use particularly in biotechnological and biomedical applications, including the separation of biomolecules and cells, catalysis, water purification, drug delivery, and tissue engineering.

This Special Issue of Gels on Recent advances in polymeric cryogels is an excellent opportunity to stand out and show your cryogels to the scientific community. Have you developed cryogels from new polymers or designed smart cryogels for a new application? Do you want to present a new tool to study cryogels? Do not hesitate to submit your manuscript to this Special Issue of Gels!

Dr. Tomas Sedlacik
Dr. Turdimuhammad Abdullah
Guest Editors

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. Gels 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.