The design and manufacture of materials capable of multiple functions – so called “multifunctional” materials – has emerged as a rapidly growing direction within materials science characterised by multidisciplinary research activity, and the significant potential for wide-ranging technological innovation extending to energy, environmental sustainability, healthcare, aerospace, nanoelectronics, soft robotics and semiconductors, says IOP Publishing. Integrating almost independent functions which typically do not occur at the same time (or which may even seem contradictive) within a single material system is the fundamental scientific challenge.
The new journal’s broad areas of interest include:
• The design and manufacture of programmed materials for multifunctionality, morphing and adaptivity
• “Meta-materials” designed and created through current chemistry or synthetic biology
• Multifunctional materials designed with capabilities of intelligent systems, such as sensing and self-diagnosis;
• Characterization methods for functions, multiscale modelling and computational materials engineering
• Novel applications of functional multi-materials.
The journal is led by Andreas Lendlein, Director of the Institute of Biomaterial Science at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Centre for Materials and Coastal Research and Professor for Materials in Life Sciences at Potsdam University, and Richard Trask, Head of the Advanced Design and Manufacturing Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor of Advanced Materials at the University of Bath, as the two founding Editors-in-Chief. Together with IOP’s publishing team and the journal’s expanding international Editorial Board, they will shape the early direction and characteristics of Multifunctional Materials, and oversee the editorial process.
Professor Trask and Professor Lendlein said: “The design and realisation of next-generation materials with multifunctional capability is of great scientific and technological interest, and an endeavour that now unites a truly multidisciplinary research community extending across both academia and industry. Multifunctional Materials is being shaped as a strictly high impact journal that will uniquely bring together all aspects of the field, and in doing so bridge the materials and systems communities involved with multifunctional design.
“As founding editors, we are very proud to be working with IOP Publishing – a leading society publisher – in developing what we believe will be a significant and very timely new journal within materials science.”
Dr Tim Smith, Associate Director - Journals, at IOP Publishing, said: “We are very excited about the launch of what represents another major addition to IOP’s materials science portfolio, and one that will further extend our publishing profile to an exciting and rapidly emerging new area.
“Our ambitions for Multifunctional Materials are high, and a priority will be to develop the journal’s content, delivery and services in close consultation with the community, to ensure that it meets the evolving needs of all aspects of the field.”
Multifunctional Materials is now open for submissions, and will be free to read for individual users, universities, and academic research institutes throughout 2017 and 2018.
