Soft matter

Soft matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical systems that are deformed or structurally altered by thermal or mechanical stress of the magnitude of thermal fluctuations. They include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, liquid crystals, and a number of biological materials. These materials share an important common feature in that predominant physical behaviors occur at an energy scale comparable with room temperature thermal energy. At these temperatures, quantum aspects are generally unimportant. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who has been called the "founding father of soft matter," received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991 for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to the more complex cases found in soft matter, in particular, to the behaviors of liquid crystals and polymers. He is especially noted for inventing the concept of reptation.

Distinctive physics

Soft Matter (journal)

Soft Matter is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the fundamental science underpinning the behaviour of soft matter. It is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The editor-in-chief is Michael Rubinstein (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

The journal was established in 2005. Initially it was published monthly, but as submissions increased it switched to 24 issues a year in 2009 and to 48 issues a year in 2012.

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in:

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2014 impact factor of 4.029.

See also

References