The Next Generation of Smart Materials and 3D/4D Printing Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

Under the umbrella of smart materials, advanced composites, functionally graded materials, shape memory materials, multi-phase materials, and biomaterials, to name a few, play a crucial and promising role in applications such as conductors, actuators, sensors, MEMS, drug delivery, chemicals detection, power generation and storage, and self-assembly. Over the last four decades, three-dimensional (3D) printing technology has opened a broad spectrum of research interests and, more importantly, has led to a tremendous breakthrough in academia and industry regarding the fabrication of complex shapes and structures with multimaterials. Based on this success, a booming research field has been emerged over the last six years in the development of dynamic or alive structures, leading to the paradigm of 4D printing, which enables the tailored manufacturing of smart materials and structures that can actively respond to external stimuli like temperature, light, humidity, and pH.

The objective of this Special Issue is to promote the dissemination of significant developments dealing with smart materials, composite structures, and 3D/4D printing technologies. This Special Issue creates a forum for research contributions covering a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from computational and experimental investigations to hybrid techniques that combine numerical and experimental approaches in the research and development of advanced smart materials and additive manufacturing technologies. All researchers/investigators are invited to contribute to this Special Issue with their original research articles.

Dr. Mahdi Bodaghi
Dr. Frédéric Demoly
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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers 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 2700 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.