Mineral Nucleation and Growth across Multiple Scales: Current Research and Future Goals
A special issue of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). This special issue belongs to the section "Crystallography and Physical Chemistry of Minerals & Nanominerals".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 1724
Special Issue Editors
Interests: nucleation and growth; biomineralization; biomolecule-directed crystallization; in situ liquid-phase TEM; biomaterial synthesis
Interests: nucleation and growth; biomineralization; disordered materials; amorphous materials; in situ X-ray scattering; X-ray diffraction
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue, "Mineral Nucleation and Growth Across Multiple Scales: Current Research and Future Goals", aims to advance our mechanistic knowledge of mineral nucleation and growth for the creation of functional biomaterials in the future.
Biomineralization represents an essential biological process in nature by which biomolecules control the minerals’ crystallization via precisely regulating nucleation pathways, attachment dynamics, and growth kinetics to produce hierarchical and unique mineral structures. Biomimetic synthesis of diverse minerals such as silicates, calcium carbonates, and calcium phosphates attracts great interest, but it remains a great challenge to prepare similar biomineral structures in the laboratory due to the limited understanding of how minerals form and evolve. To provide new opportunities for the synthesis of biomimetic materials with exceptional features, it is imperative to investigate the underlying crystallization mechanism and forecast the possible outcomes.
From mechanistic understandings to biomimetic applications of minerals, this Special Issue will feature original research and review articles from prominent experts in the field. Moreover, the combination of in situ spectroscopy and microscopy imaging techniques (such as FTIR, AFM, NMR, TEM, etc.) provides a valuable tool to study the nucleation and development of minerals due to their excellent spatial and temporal resolution in solution environments. For inclusion in our Special Issue, we seek contributions from researchers working on foundational research and/or biomineral-inspired material preparations.
Dr. Biao Jin
Dr. Sebastian T. Mergelsberg
Dr. Changyu Shao
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- multistep nucleation
- crystallization by particle attachment
- biomolecule-directed crystallization
- biomaterials
- biomimetic preparation
- in situ spectroscopy and microscopy techniques
