EPJ E Topical Issue: Novel Molecular Materials and Devices from Functional Soft Matter

Details

Published on 20 September 2022

Guest Editors: Jean-Marc Di Meglio, Aritra Ghosh, Orlando Guzmán, P. Lakshmi Praveen.

Submissions are invited for a Topical Issue of EPJ E on “Novel Molecular Materials and Devices from Functional Soft Matter”.

This Topical issue will focus on soft matter materials and devices.

Soft matter can be defined by a large response to weak external perturbations, with physical properties governed by local internal dynamics. It may contain ordered structures at mesoscopic scales, but appear disordered at molecular scales. Because of this, the ordered and disordered aspects of soft matter can be combined to manufacture innovative and original functional materials and devices. Since the range of soft matter materials is very broad, including polymers, gels, colloids, liquid crystals, and many biomaterials, there is a need for understanding their large response functions to combined stimuli.

The most ambitious course of action is then to develop multi-functional materials and devices that exploit two or more rheological, electrical, electronic, photo-physical, quantum chemical, or opto-electronic responses of soft matter. Solving grand challenges for new generations of functional materials demands, beyond understanding, the ability to control structure-function relationships over all length scales — from the individual molecular building blocks to the macroscopic device —. The aim of this Topical Issue is to provide an inspiring platform for the dissemination of the latest developments and discoveries in the design, simulation, modeling, synthesis, construction and characterization of soft matter structures for functional materials and devices.

This Topical Issue will cover, among other possibilities, the following topics:

• (a) Flowing liquid crystals, and other complex liquids, as novel modulators, sensors and optical filters.
• (b) Multi-Phase, and photo stability analysis based on multi-physics methodologies.
• (c) Energy harvesting and storage by soft materials.
• (d) Smart hybrid materials with micro- and nano-structures.
• (e) Soft biological and bio-inspired materials.
• (f) Molecules for logic gate and integrated circuit applications as well as organic electronics, thick and thin-film materials.
• (g) Multifunctional and stimuli-responsive polymers and gels.
• (h) 3D/4D printing and fabrication of soft materials, robots or machines.
• (i) Soft Matter Devices

The emphasis of this Topical issue is on physical methodologies and characterizations to resolve multi-disciplinary issues. The guest editor team will promote novel contributions in the form of full papers, reviews, or short communications. We invite contributors to communicate their intention to submit manuscripts for this Topical Issue to the Guest Editors as soon as possible. Please provide the tentative title of the paper and a short abstract. The full manuscripts should be submitted before the deadline directly to the EPJE Editorial Office at https://www.editorialmanager.com/epje/.

Submissions should be clearly identified as intended for the Topical Issue on “Novel Molecular Materials and Devices from Functional Soft Matter”. Papers will be published continuously and will appear as soon as accepted on the journal website. The electronic version of the Topical Issue will contain all accepted papers in the order of publication. All submitted papers will be refereed according to the usual high standards of the journal. More information about EPJ E, including instructions for authors is available here.

Guest Editors of the Special issue:

Jean-Marc Di Meglio, MSCmed Group, Matière et Systèmes Complexes Laboratory, CNRS & University of Paris, Faculté de médecine, 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris, France Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Aritra Ghosh, Renewable Energy, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall, TR10 9FE, UK. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Orlando Guzmán, Department of Physics, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Mexico City, Mexico. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

P Lakshmi Praveen, Department of Physics, Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla-768018, Sambalpur, Odisha, India. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Open Access

EPJ E is a hybrid journal offering Open Access publication via the Open Choice programme and a growing number of Springer Compact “Publish and Read” arrangements which enable authors to publish OA at no direct cost (all costs are paid centrally).