Mineral-Related Oxo-Salts: Synthesis and Structural Crystallography

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is a tribute to the recently deceased Emeritus Professor of Mineralogy and Crystallography, Dr. Ekkehart Tillmanns, who has left a special legacy in the field of mineralogical crystallography and mineral synthesis. The Special Issue plans to include a representative group of papers in the field of synthesis and structural crystallography of mineral-related oxo-salts.

Within the last twenty-five years, there has been ever-increasing activity in the field of systematic treatment of various classes of mineral-like oxo-salts. Some of them (e.g., silicates, zeolites, vanadates, phosphates, copper oxo-salts, REE oxo-compounds, etc.) are used in a wide variety of technical applications, and some of them attract attention because of their environmental importance (e.g., arsenates, carbonates and sulphates). Their technical use and/or environmental stability is based on their special physical and chemical behavior, which is intrinsically dependent on their crystal structure.

A thorough investigation of the mineral-related chemical systems leads to a detailed understanding of which topologies and connectivities are likely to form under which conditions (e.g., temperature, pH, ratios of ionic radii, etc.), a knowledge that could also be applied to the various groups of different oxo-salts.

Therefore, the idea behind this Special Issue is to identify the most successful synthesis approaches applied to the preparation of the numerous classes of mineral-like oxo-salts. Besides the development of the synthesis techniques for oxo-salt synthesis, an additional focus of this Special Issue will also be the establishing of the correlation between the preparation conditions and crystal structure on the one hand, and the resulting properties and/or environmental stability on the other.

We look forward to receiving your contributions in the form of communications, full articles, or review papers.

Dr. Tamara Đorđević
Dr. Natalia V. Zubkova
Prof. Dr. Igor Djerdj
Guest Editors

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