Dear Colleagues,

Ubiquitous to many facets of our machines, lubricants are often underestimated and viewed as commodity products. Lubricants are one of the most critical elements to engine durability and lifetime, providing much sought-after fuel efficiency, yet they are unseen and long ignored. They are additized with many materials that maintain and perform specific functions, one of the main components being polymers. The critical functions of polymers (as viscosity modifiers or viscosity index improvers, dispersants, pour point depressants, and multifunctional) are a direct effect of their structure, molecular weight, architecture, and topology. Because polymeric lubricant additives are an “old” technology, fundamental studies that address structure–properties relationships are often missing from the published literature.

This Special Issue has been launched to highlight the most recent advances in polymer design and synthesis, interaction within bulk base oil, interaction with other components, viscosity, shear stability, film forming properties, tribology, surface interaction effects, molecular weight, mechanistic studies, and machine learning, to achieve a fundamental understanding of their operation. In addition, any work around green polymers (biobased or plastic-derived) is encouraged. Of interest are polymers utilized in fluid lubricants and greases; however, polymers for solid lubrication will also be considered. We hope that this Special Issue stimulates authors and readers, as much as the Editors.  

Dr. Lelia Cosimbescu
Dr. Robert Erck
Guest Editor

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.

• Viscosity improvers
• film-forming
• polymer architecture
• green polymers
• tribology
• polymer synthesis
• shear stability
• atomistic simulations