Dear Colleagues,

We are immersed in an era of rapidly growing and strongly relevant advances in science and technology, where scientific and innovation areas are increasingly overlapping in new and exciting ways, for the general benefict of humanity. Recent technological advances point to the development of sustainable and interconnected smart systems, strongly based on the development of smart and multifunctional materials.

Polymers offer the widest range of bulk physical and chemical properties, are versatile and easy to process, but often lack the surface properties required for specific applications. Surfaces are the limits with the external environment, where the material works and behaves, being an essential aspect for the proper functional characteristics and functional lifetime of the material. Thus, the tailoring of surface properties for different purposes, such as protective or decorative coatings, friction and wear, thin film technologies, biomaterials, sensors and actuators, medicinal devices, and membranes, among many others, is of utmost importance to transform these functional materials into highly valuable finished products.

Smart and multifunctional materials are benefitting from this understanding and control of their physico-chemical properties, leading to a suitable tailoring of processability and integration into devices, shape/morphology, and performance. In the last few decades, the functional properties and use of polymer concepts has changed in this regard, resulting in a new generation of high-performance materials that have led to greater focus on controlling production, structures, and functional responses, as well as on implementation in proof-of-concept advanced applications. The modification of the polymer surface becomes an increasingly relevant topic in the strongly growing field of smart and multifunctional materials.

Despite the intense and fruitful progress experienced by the research community in these areas, there are still relevant issues that should be addressed and discussed related to improved performance, a deeper understainding of the physicochemical characteristics of the mateirials, processability, device integration, and reliability, in order to enable real applications. It seems noticeable that open questions and challenges are constant, which also act as an inexhaustible source of ideas and applications for future research.

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue that seeks to become a landmark in the development of this interesting and fruitful research field. Review papers, full papers, and short communications are all welcome.

Dr. João Nunes-Pereira
Prof. Dr. Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez
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. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.

• Polymer functionalization
• Surface modification
• Polymer composites
• Coatings
• Plasma treatments
• Biopolymer functionalization
• Smart surfaces
• Self-healing surfaces
• Self-sensing surfaces
• Responsive surfaces
• Planar device integration
• Multilayer approaches