Focus issue: Journal of Materials Research

Thermodynamics of Complex Solids
Issue date: November 2019
Submission deadline: April 1, 2019

Thermodynamics forms the fundamental underpinning of reactivity, transformation, and stability, placing controls on synthesis, corrosion, degradation, environmental transport, catalysis, and biological reactivity. Rapid developments in industry provide increasing need for improved and new materials, and for better ways to understand behavior and process failure on a large scale.

Improvements in thermal analysis equipment, the development of commercial high temperature calorimeters, and accurate and rapid cryogenic heat capacity measurements have renewed interest for thermodynamic measurements. Developments in experimental thermochemistry are paralleled by rapid progress in computational methods, integrating calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) and new molecular dynamics simulation methods for characterizing energy and free energy landscapes. There are strategies for coupling DFT results and experimental data within the framework of free energy modeling of phase diagrams and thermochemistry in complex multicomponent systems (e.g., CalPhaD).

This Focus Issue will bring together experimentalists in thermodynamics and a wider circle of computational and structural scientists to understand the fundamental science of complex materials and apply this understanding to a rich variety of scientific and technological problems. Contributors will include participants in the rapidly growing Thermodynamics Consortium (www.thermocon.org), whose members combine experimental thermodynamics, structural investigations, and theory/computation to provide new understanding of stability and reactivity in complex solids.

Manuscripts are solicited in the following areas: 

• High temperature refractories
• Functional materials
• Catalysts
• Environmental and geological materials
• Soft and hybrid materials

Guest Editors: 

Alexandra Navrotsky, University of California, Davis, USA    
Kristina Lilova, University of California, Davis, USA
Mark Asta, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Di Wu, Washington State University, USA

Manuscript Submission:

To be considered for this issue, new and previously unpublished results significant to the development of this field should be presented. The manuscripts must be submitted via the JMR electronic submission system by April 1, 2019. Manuscripts submitted after this deadline will not be considered for the issue due to time constraints on the review process. Please select “Focus issue: Thermodynamics of Complex Solids” as the Focus Issue designation. Note our manuscript submission minimum length of 3250 words, excluding figures, captions, and references, with at least 6 and no more than 10 figures and tables combined. Review articles may be longer but must be pre-approved by proposal to the Guest Editors via jmr@mrs.org. The proposal form and author instructions may be found at www.mrs.org/jmr-instructions. All manuscripts will be reviewed in a normal but expedited fashion. Papers submitted by the deadline and subsequently accepted will be published in the Focus Issue. Other manuscripts that are acceptable but cannot be included in the issue will be scheduled for publication in a subsequent issue of JMR.

Please direct questions to jmr@mrs.org.