Featured Reviews on Soft Matter
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Soft Matter".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 16
Special Issue Editor
Interests: liquid crystals; chiral liquid crystals; ferroelectric liquid crystals; polymer stabilized liquid crystals; nanoparticles in anisotropic fluids; liquid crystal-nanotube dispersions; defects and defect dynamics; phase ordering in soft matter; fractal structures
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Soft materials have received increasing attention over the years due to their increasingly interdisciplinary nature and the combination of different aspects of soft matter, for example, liquid crystallinity with polymeric elastomers, biomaterials with photonics and composites of polymers and colloids in the form of functional nanoparticles. This has led to increasingly sophisticated materials for various applications, such as soft robotics, self-organised semiconductors, widely tuneable photonics, wearable energy conversion materials and smart windows, among others.
Given the growing importance of soft materials for fundamental research and device applications, we aim to publish a Special Issue on soft matter in the journal Materials entitled "Featured Reviews on Soft Matter”. This Special Issue aims to collect a broad range of relevant review articles on different aspects of soft matter to depict the current state of the art. Review articles should be accessible to a broad readership of material scientists, physicists, chemists and other related disciplines and touch on modern topics relating to the interdisciplinary soft matter field.
Some reviews will be by invitation, but this Special Issue is also open to other suggested topics. In the latter case, please submit an outline/table of contents together with a meaningful review title before submitting a fully written paper. Possible topics are given below; however, this list is not comprehensive and can be altered based on suggestions.
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
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.
Keywords
- self-assembly and self-organisation
- soft polymers, soft robotics
- colloidal solids, phase transitions and glass transition
- liquid crystals (thermotropic or lyotropic)
- gels, foams, surfactants, soft interfaces, suspensions and complex fluids
- biological materials
- granular matter
- active matter
- soft (tuneable) photonic and metamaterials
- stimuli-responsive soft materials (thermal, electric, magnetic, mechanical and optic)
- new experimental techniques for soft matter (mechanical, rheological, scattering, imaging and microscopic)
- theory and simulation of soft matter
- application of machine learning to soft matter
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
