It’s a fascinating time for polymer science, as it proves its worth repeatedly in fields as diverse as energy generation, biomedical applications, and nanotechnology. At the Journal of Polymer Science: Polymer Physics we bring you exciting advances across the physics of polymer systems, so you can be sure that if you need to know about the physical properties of polymers from optical, ionic, and electronic, to morphological, structural, or predicted, you can find it all here.
Our latest papers showcase some of the most stimulating work in the field. Perhaps you haven’t yet read the work where Garry Rumbles and Natalie Stingelin and their colleagues from NREL and Imperial College show the dramatic effects of processing and microstructure on the generation of charge carriers in polymers for solar cells, and resolve some of the discrepancies in the recent literature in reported charge-carrier yields. Or have you seen that Jian Ping Gong from Hokkaido University and her colleagues have shown that it’s actually the holes in their double-network hydrogels that make them so strong? Thomas Russell at UMass Amherst and his colleagues shared with us their method to manipulate block copolymer morphology using azide-containing small molecules; and Rich Spontak from North Carolina State University demonstrated that the materials properties of dielectric elastomers have a substantial effect on their actuation.
For news like this on a weekly basis, sign up to our ToC alerts on our homepage to make sure you don’t miss a thing.
We’ve been busy commissioning Reviews from the top experts in the field on the hottest topics in polymer science, to keep you up to date on the fastest progress in the field. The resulting articles are consistently amongst the most-downloaded papers of the month. Top of the downloads list this year have been three outstanding Reviews: Mario Leclerc’s (University of Laval) view on the fast-growing field of thermoelectric polymers; a full treatment of the biomedical applications of biomedical polymers from Cato Laurencin at the University of Connecticut; and a look at the role of polymer science in water purification from Benny Freeman and Don Paul at University of Texas at Austin. The full Review series is available for free download here.
The Review collection will continue to build over the coming months to give you an evolving library of all the most important topics in the physics of polymers: look out for Mike Hickner’s (Penn State) review of water-mediated transport in ionomers, vital reading for polymer scientists working on fuel cells; and our upcoming Review on soft quasicrystals from Tomonari Dotera (Kinki University), a leader in this Nobel Award-winning field. To make sure you stay ahead of the curve, we also have Perspective articles on the next most exciting topics that you might not yet have encountered. Be sure to check out our latest Perspective from Chinedum Osuji from Yale, who discusses the scalable microstructure control we can expect from the field of magnetic ordering of block copolymers.
For field-dominating topic areas we devote entire special issues to the most prominent areas in the field to make sure that you have all you need to know at your fingertips. For instance, look out early next year for our special issues devoted to polymer electronics and adhesion and fracture in polymers.
We look forward to reading your next paper – submit here to be part of the must-read forum on the physics of polymers and benefit from rapid peer review and online publication just 15 days after your paper is accepted.
Comments on the journal? Questions on scope? Suggestions for Reviews or special issues? You can always email us at [email protected], or you can next catch our editors out and about at the MRS Fall meeting in Boston, 28th Nov—2nd Dec.
