The 15th Anniversary of Materials—Recent Advances in Soft Matter

Dear Colleagues,

Launched in 2008, Materials has provided readers with high-quality content edited by active researchers in materials science for 15 years through a model of sustainable open access and outstanding editorial service. Today, the published papers receive more than 1,500,000 views per month, with readers from more than 150 countries and regions.

We would like to celebrate the 15^th anniversary of the journal Materials with a Special Issue on the recent advances in soft matter.

As already suggested by their name, soft materials are those that can be stimulated by very small energies of the order of thermal fluctuations, kT. They possess extremely small elastic constants and the respective deforming forces can be mechanical, electric, magnetic, thermal or even optic in nature. Further, soft matter often exhibits the properties of self-assembly and self-organisation. The main representatives of this class of materials are soft polymers, colloidal solids and liquid crystals, but it also includes granular matter, foams, gels, soft interfaces, surfactants and biological macromolecules.

A fundamental understanding of soft matter is of outstanding importance both from an experimental and theoretical point of view, and simulations can be carried out to be able to control, tune, tailor, enhance and predict their properties. It is then possible to exploit these materials in countless applications, as is already conducted, for example, in packaging materials, the food and beauty industry, healthcare and medicine, displays and switchable optical components, and fabrics.

Contributions to this Special Issue can cover a broad field of topics, as indicated by the keywords, which is by no means exhaustive and should be seen as a general guide.

Dr. Ingo Dierking
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. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2600 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.