Natural Minerals as Smart Materials for Advanced Technologies
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 June 2022) | Viewed by 5986
Special Issue Editor
Interests: natural adsorbents; material characterization; adsorption processes; biogenic minerals; nanomaterials
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Recently, materials with the ability to reversibly change some of their functional or structural properties in response to various kinds of deliberately imposed external stimulus (mechanical, chemical, physical) have been classified into the group of so-called smart materials. Natural minerals with unique physicochemical properties can also be reasonably be included in the category of smart materials as a separate group of smart natural minerals. Many naturally occurring minerals are characterized by phenomenal properties, including: optical (opal, ulexite); piezoelectric (quartz, berlinite); electric (perovskite, covellite); magnetic (garnets, magnetoplumbite); multiferroic (boracite); and ferroelectric/ferroelastic (rippite). They can also have unique micro- and nanostructures, including tubular (chrysotile, imogolite); hollow spherules (allophone); cluster structures (menezesite); layered double structures (takovite); frameworks (zorite); metal-organic frameworks (stepanovite); and self-replicated structures (montmorillonite). The natural minerals arouse great interest due to the possibility of using their active functional structures in many advanced technological solutions and new-generation devices.
This Special Issue is intended for professionals in different fields of science with a special interest in the investigation of new fascinating phenomena occurring in mineral structures at the micro- and nano-scale, and will cover a wide range of smart natural minerals with unique physicochemical properties.
The idea of this issue was also to integrate knowledge from various scientific fields regarding the unique properties of natural minerals. This may result in the emergence of new ideas, inspiration in the development of new methods for the synthesis of new advanced materials.
Prof. Dr. Myroslav Sprynskyy
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- smart natural minerals
- nanotube, nanosphere, and nanocluster mineral nanostructures
- piezoelectric, magnetic, and ferroelectric minerals
- photonic crystals
- biogenic minerals
- structural phase transitions
- mineral surface reactivity
- structure–properties relationships
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