Advanced Polymeric Materials for Defence Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The continuous evolution of defence and security technologies places increasing demands on materials that can deliver superior performance, multifunctionality, adaptability, and reliability under extreme operational conditions. Advanced materials—including polymers, composite systems, fibrous architectures, and functional hybrid materials—are central to meeting these challenges by enabling lightweight protection, enhanced survivability, and intelligent response capabilities across defence platforms.

This Special Issue of Polymers is affiliated with the AuxDefense2026 5th World Conference on Advanced Materials for Defense (Funchal, Portugal, 1–3 July, 2026; website: https://www.auxdefense.com/).

It aims to showcase recent advances in polymer-based and polymer-enabled materials for defence and security applications, encompassing structural, protective, and smart material systems. Emphasis is placed on materials design, processing, characterisation, modelling, and performance evaluation, with clear relevance to defence environments and operational requirements.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Polymeric, composite, and hybrid materials for ballistic, blast, and impact protection;
• Fibre-reinforced composites, textile-based materials, and fibrous architectures for lightweight defence structures;
• High-performance fibres and nanofibers, including electrospun and hierarchical fibrous systems;
• Functional and smart composites, including self-healing, sensing, adaptive, and stimuli-responsive materials;
• Multifunctional materials combining mechanical performance with thermal, electrical, or electromagnetic functionality;
• Stealth, signature-management, and electromagnetic materials, including radar-absorbing and EMI-shielding composites;
• Protective coatings, surface-engineered materials, and corrosion-resistant systems;
• Thermal management, fire-retardants, and insulation materials for defence applications;
• Additive manufacturing, advanced processing, and scalable fabrication techniques for polymers and composites;
• Durability, damage tolerance, modelling, and life-cycle assessment of advanced defence materials;
• Sustainable, recyclable, and bio-derived polymer and composite systems for defence and security.

This Special Issue seeks to foster interdisciplinary research bridging materials science, mechanical engineering, chemistry, and defence technology. Contributions that demonstrate integration of material functionality, structural efficiency, manufacturability, and defence relevance—including dual-use and transition-to-application perspectives—are particularly encouraged.

Prof. Dr. Raúl Manuel Esteves Sousa Fangueiro
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. 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.