Dear Colleagues,

A review of the use of full-field measurement techniques for composite material and structure characterization is necessary.

Improvements in image processing by microcomputers have led to non-contact measurement techniques becoming increasingly popular in the experimental mechanics community. These techniques directly provide displacement or stress contours on the test specimens. Temperature fields are also available thanks to infrared scanning cameras. Such measurements represent in fact a new type of tool for researchers in the mechanics of solid bodies, which is particularly interesting in the field of characterization of composite materials.

Digital technologies hold enormous potential for improving the performance of future-generation sorting and processing plants; however, this potential remains largely untapped.

Good characterization of the material is fundamental to in order to know its properties, support its application and understand its performance in the desired process.

There is a variety of physical and chemical information that can obtained by different techniques, whose choice depends on the type of material to be studied and on the available instrumentation. The available techniques include UV–vis, FTIR, Raman, XPS, EDX, zeta potential, XRD, SEM/FESEM, TEM, AFM, surface area and porosimetry, VSM, DLS, thermoanalytical analysis (TG, DTA, DSC and DTG), among several others. These techniques enable:

·         the identification,

·         location and quantification of chemical constituents (like elements, functional groups and molecules),

·         the study of the structure, topography, morphology, magnetic properties, and size, among other physical properties of materials.

This information can provide great support for the assessment of the synthesis/functionalization of adsorbent materials as well as in the study of the adsorption process by the interactions between adsorbent and adsorbate.

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are very versatile methodologies for 2D and 3D material characterization. The high spatial resolution of SEM and TEM, from nano-to microscale in both imaging and chemical characterization modes, is highly complementary to other non-destructive materials characterization techniques.

Nanotechnology is an emerging multidisciplinary technology that involves the synthesis of molecules in the size range (ie 10-9 m). From a chemistry and materials science perspective, the development of new products using nanomaterials is exciting because, for a given type of particle, as one moves down the nanoscale (ie, as the particle size decreases within the nanoscale range), the fundamental physical and chemical properties change—often giving completely new and different physical/chemical properties.

So, research articles, reviews and studies in this area of study are welcome. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Dusica P. Ilic

Section editor