Collecting research and review articles covering all aspects of ageing-induced morphological changes in polymer materials
Deadline for contributions: 30 September 2021
Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open-access journal published by MDPI. Polymers are nowadays a driving force in our society. Unfortunately, they have a major drawback: independent of the application, they experience changes in their macroscopic properties with time upon the impact of various external factors including temperature, radiation, humidity, and mechanical load. While many researchers conduct accelerated ageing studies, the reported results rarely match the observations from natural ageing. The main reasons for this discrepancy are currently attributed to the spatial dependence of the changes with the ageing time and the combined effects of various types of ageing.
The macroscopic properties of polymers are largely determined by their morphology in terms of chemical structure, molecular dynamics, molecular weight, crystallinity degree etc. Thus, understanding and modelling the temporal and the spatial physical and chemical changes in the molecular network will provide the framework for establishing reliable structure-properties relationships requested for a better understanding of the experimental observations and for determining their lifetime. For this, one needs to take advantage of the capabilities of various modern analytical methods, which are able to probe different morphological aspects and to identify the most sensitive microscopic parameters towards ageing. Moreover, there is a great need for simple, robust, and low-cost analytical methods for onsite non-destructive morphological evaluation. In this way, systematic details about the microscopic changes associated with natural ageing can be gained.
This special issue aims at collecting research and review articles covering all aspects of ageing-induced morphological changes in polymer materials. It provides a platform for discussing challenges and open issues by presenting suitable morphological characterization techniques and modelling methods for improved structure-properties relationships.
You are invited to contribute a research or review article for this issue.
The article processing charge (APC) for each accepted paper is 2200 Swiss Francs (CHF), which includes an English editing service and promotion after publications. The editorial office supplies some discounts for papers received by 30 April 2021:
one planned paper, 400 CHF discount;
two planned papers, 500 CHF discount per paper;
three planned papers, 600 CHF discount per paper.
More information about how to submit can be found at the Special Issue WEBSITE