Geomaterials: Compositional, Mineralogical and Textural Features

Dear Colleagues,

The world of geomaterials is constantly evolving, both for the opening of new strategies aimed at environmental sustainability and the optimization of well-established procedures such as: supplying industrial minerals and critical elements, designing and manufacturing innovative construction materials, the transformation of waste in secondary resources in the circular economy point of view, storage of greenhouse gases, toxic and hazardous materials, knowledge of ancient technological processes (i.e., archaeological ceramics), etc. The prospection, extraction, treatment and employment of geomaterials are based on the analysis of their compositional, mineralogical and textural features. These latter can be obtained using by means many different analytical techniques, like optical microscopy, SEM-EDS, XRPD, XRF, TGA, EPMA-WDS, ICP-MS, FTIR, SWIR, Raman, TEM, X-ray and neutron tomography.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect studies dealing with the characterisations of geomaterials, either natural (i.e., rocks and deposits), artificial or historic (i.e., ceramics, concretes, mortars, glasses, bricks, tiles and alloys). The characterisations of these materials may focus on the crystal-chemical attributes of phases and pores, their abundances, sizes, shapes, distribution and orientation, as well as their physic-mechanical attributes. The implications of these investigations reach beyond the Earth Sciences domains and may have strong implications, both in several technical–scientific areas such as material sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, archaeometry, forensics and toxicology, and also to provide useful research to the industries.

Dr. Francesco Radica
Dr. Gianluca Iezzi
Dr. Claudio Finocchiaro
Guest Editors

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