Honor the Achievements of Prof. Alejandro J. Müller in Polymer Crystallization

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce an honorary Special Issue of Polymers on the great contributions of Prof. Dr. Alejandro J. Müller on polymer crystallization.

Prof. A.J. Müller is an IKERBASQUE (Basque Foundation for Science) Research Professor at POLYMAT and the Polymer Science and Technology Department, Faculty of Chemistry, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain. He is also an Editor for POLYMER (Elsevier), IF (2019): 4.231 (Q1), in the joint areas of Polymer Physics and Physical Chemistry. He is a Corresponding Member of the “Academia Nacional de la Ingeniería y del Hábitat de Venezuela (ANIH)" or Venezuelan National Academy of Engineering and Habitat.

He has co-authored more than 500 publications, which have been cited over 12000 times, with a H-index of 61. He has tutored 90 B.Sc. theses, 57 M.Sc., and 22 Ph.D. theses. He has won several awards in Venezuela, including the Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury, Polar Prize for basic science. In 2011, he received the international "Paul J. Flory Polymer Research Prize." Prof. Müller has given more than 85 keynotes, plenary, and invited lectures in more than 25 countries.

Prof. Müller has devoted many years of his research to the understanding of polymer crystallization. Among his most significant contributions, the following can be mentioned:

1) Understanding fractionated crystallization in polymer blends. The group of Prof. Müller was among the first to demonstrate that the fractionated crystallization of dispersed polymer micro-droplets was due to the lack of highly active heterogeneities (such as those in the bulk polymer) using self-nucleation and other nuclei injection approaches. They systematically study the effect of dispersion, droplet sizes, and the use of compatibilizers.

2) The first topic above led to the study of confined micro-domains in block copolymers. The group led by Müller was one of the first to study the nucleation and crystallization of confined block copolymers. They first studied strongly segregated block copolymers and worked on how confinement affected the crystallization kinetics recognizing the impact of nucleation on the Avrami index and the possible nucleating modalities: fractionated crystallization, surface-induced nucleation, and homogeneous nucleation.

3) Confinement and fractionated crystallization studies were also extended to polymer infiltration within anode aluminum oxide (AAO) nanoporous templates, where he and collaborators found that the origin of fractionated crystallization was the percolation of residual material on the surface. The crystallization kinetics of infiltrated materials (with well-cleaned template surfaces) transformed into nucleation-dominated kinetics.

4) Prof. Müller’s group was also one of the first to study the crystallization of double crystalline diblock copolymers and terpolymers both strongly segregated and weakly segregated. His group was able to show examples of “templated” crystallization leading to double crystalline and triple crystalline spherulites and their inter-lamellar assembly.

5) In the field of nanocomposites, he coined the term “super-nucleation” to describe the efficiency of certain nucleating agents (such as carbon nanotubes) that can be more efficient that the polymer self-nuclei.

6) He developed, with his group, the thermal fractionation technique successive self-nucleation and annealing (SSA). This technique has found a large number of applications for the characterization of any polymer whose linear crystallizable sequence is interrupted by branches, comonomers, stereo-defects, etc.

7) He and his collaborators have recently made important contributions to long-standing problems in polymer crystallization, such as isodimorphic copolyesters and crystalline memory effects.

All submissions in polymer science are welcome and not limited to the polymer crystallization field.

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. 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.

• Polymer crystallization
• Block copolymers
• Nucleation
• Confined crystallization
• Morphology
• Crystallization kinetics
• Thermal analysis
• Random copolymers
• Polymer blends
• Nucleating agents
• Nanocomposites
• Self-assembly
• AAO templates