EditorialMicroscopic Techniques in Materials Science: CurrentTrends in the Area of Blends, Composites, and Hybrid Materials

Joanna Rydz ,1 Alena Siskova,2 and Anita Andicsova Eckstein3

1Centre of Polymer and Carbon Materials, Polish Academy of Sciences, 41-800 Zabrze, Poland2Institute of Materials and Machine Mechanics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 845 13 Bratislava, Slovakia3Polymer Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 845 41 Bratislava, Slovakia

Correspondence should be addressed to Joanna Rydz; jrydz@cmpw-pan.edu.pl

Received 24 July 2019; Accepted 24 July 2019; Published 20 August 2019

Copyright © 2019 Joanna Rydz et al. %is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Microscopic techniques such as optical microscopy (con-ventional light microscopy (LM), fluorescence microscopy(FM), confocal/multiphoton microscopy, and stimulatedemission depletion microscopy (STED)), scanning probemicroscopy (scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), atomicforce microscopy (AFM), near-field scanning optical mi-croscopy, and others) as well as electron microscopy(scanning electronmicroscopy (SEM), transmission electronmicroscopy (TEM), scanning transmission electron mi-croscopy (STEM), and focus ion beammicroscopy (FIB)) areoften used in materials science. %ose techniques make itpossible to assess the morphology, composition, physicalproperties, and dynamic behaviour of materials, thusmaking a significant contribution to the development ofmaterials science. %ey are necessary for both the qualitycontrol of products and the development of new materials.Design, synthesis, characterisation, and development ofuseful innovative, technologically advanced, adaptable, andmultifunctional materials and devices with lower mass,smaller volume, higher efficiency, and lower cost, in par-ticular novel materials and structures, are rapidly growingfields of materials science. Advanced blends, composites,and hybrid materials are the most-developing classes of newmaterials based on ceramic, glass, silica, and carbon that leadto numerous technological innovations. Metals and alloys,intermetallic composites, magnetic materials, ionic crystals,covalent crystals, coatings, films, foils, and pigments are usedfor advanced applications. Above all, functional materialsare found applications in automotive and transportationindustry, aeronautics and space industry, and energy, en-gineering, and environmental sectors. New solutions are also

being developed in agriculture and horticulture sectors andpackaging and food-service sectors. Knowledge on the re-lationships between structures, properties, functions, andperformance is essential for prospective safe applications ofsuch materials in the areas of human health (in medical,pharmaceutical, and dental industry) and the environment.%e study of the physical and technical foundation of thelatest developments in the areas described is based on mi-croscopic techniques that are also used in a variety of in-dustrial applications, including topographic and dynamicalsurface studies of many materials. Fundamental and appliedresearch in emerging application areas in nanotechnology,interfacial science and engineering, advanced manufactur-ing, catalysis, bioengineering, bio-inspired synthesis, greenproduction routes, sensing, and actuation is often also basedon microscopic techniques.

%e aim of the Special Issue was not only to present novelachievements and contribution of microscopic techniques tothe development of materials science but also to presentsignificant improvements to proven research techniques andrecent technical and methodological changes, particularly inapplications in the field of human health and the environment.%e proposed scope concerned to research on the design,synthesis, characterisation, development, and manufacturingof useful innovative, technologically advanced materials anddevices that have general applicability and that form the basisfor the evolving knowledge about blends, composites, andhybrid materials. Special emphasis was placed on environ-mentally friendly blends, composites, and hybrid materialsfrom renewable resources with no adverse effect on the en-vironment, with a short global carbon life cycle, with green

HindawiAdvances in Materials Science and EngineeringVolume 2019, Article ID 9072958, 2 pageshttps://doi.org/10.1155/2019/9072958

production routes, suitable to recycle materials based onnatural, renewable, and synthetic polymers for the sustainablefuture.

%e articles in the special issue focus mainly on thecharacterisation of new materials using microscopic tech-niques, especially SEM and AFM. %e first paper in thisSpecial Issue presents an overview of the recent advances ofthe three-dimensional (3D) characterisation of carbon-based materials conducted using focused ion beam-scanningelectron microscope (FIB-SEM) tomography. Currentstudies and further potential applications of the FIB-SEM 3Dtomography for carbon-based materials are discussed. %eadvances of FIB-SEM 3D reconstruction are highlighted toreveal the high and accurate resolution of internal structuresof carbon-based materials, as well as suggestions for theadoption and improvement of the FIB-SEM tomographysystem for broad carbon-based research. %e next articleprovides an overview of topographic and dynamical surfacestudies of (bio)degradable polymers, in particular aliphaticpolyesters, the most promising ones. %e (bio)degradationprocess promotes physical and chemical changes in materialproperties that can be characterised by microscopic tech-niques. %ese changes occurring both under controlledconditions as well as in the processing stage or during useindicate morphological and structural transformationsresulting from the deterioration of the material and have asignificant impact on the characteristic of materials used inmany applications, for example, for use as packaging. %efollowing article examines the structure, morphologicalcontrol, and antibacterial activity of silver-titanium dioxide(Ag/TiO2) micro-nanocomposite materials against Staphy-lococcus aureus using SEM, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX)spectroscopy, and AFM. %e results revealed that the shapeof micro- and nanocomposites materials could be arrangedby adjusting the parameters. %e proper nanorod structure,ideal for antibacterial applications, is obtained at 1000°Cgrowth temperature during 8 hours of baking. Treating of S.aureus stock with Ag/TiO2 nanocomposites is able to reducebacterial growth with a significant result. In the next article, aSEM analysis is conducted to investigate the effect offly ash and polypropylene fibres on the microstructure ofsoil-cement with different polypropylene fibre contents.Also to solve the problems of failure of pretensioned boltsupports under high ground pressure and temperature, anew kind of anchorage agent with excellent performance hasbeen developed. %e reasons for this excellent performancein physical and mechanical tests compared to a conventionalfull-length anchorage agent were examined, among others,by SEM imaging. Subsequently, Cu-SiCp/AZ91D compos-ites were prepared with high-density pulse currents. %ewettability between SiCp and matrix during solidification isimproved by coating a 0.095 μm thick copper film on thesurface of SiCp. In order to analyse the tissue changes of thesamples, SEM analysis of solidification structures at highresolution for elemental scanning was performed. Anotherreview concerns the current state of characterisation tech-niques for the interface in carbon nanotube-reinforcedpolymer nanocomposites. %e different types of interfacesthat exist within the nanocomposites are listed. %e emerging

trends in characterisation techniques and methodologies forthe interface are presented, and their strengths and limitationsare summarised. %e intrinsic mechanism of the interactionsat the interface between the carbon nanotubes and thepolymer matrix is discussed. Special attention is given to thechemical functionalisation of carbon nanotubes. %e lastreview presents critically existing studies on the micro-structure of glass fibre reinforced polymers (GFRPs) rein-forcing bars exposed to various conditioning regimes. Inaddition, the review identifies research gaps in the existingknowledge and highlights the directions for future research.Fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are proposed ascorrosion-resistant alternatives to traditional steel re-inforcement in concrete structures. In this group of com-posites, GFRPs are the primary selection of FRP forconstruction applications. Despite the fact that they havemany advantages, their widespread use by the industry ishindered due to the deterioration of their performance insevere environmental conditions.%e last article examines thedevelopment of strength in different calcium aluminate ce-ment (CAC) mixture mortars with granulated ground blast-furnace slag (GGBS). In addition, the pore structure analysis isaccompanied to quantify the porosity. %e surfaces of thefragment for cement paste of CAC-GGBS mixtures cured at365 days were investigated using SEM analysis. %e presenceof stratlingite was detected. To compare atomic ratios (Ca/Aland Si/Al) at the C2ASH phase in the paste of the binarymixtures, EDS analysis was performed simultaneously.

%e special issue presents a contemporary overview oflatest developments in the field of advanced blends, com-posites, and hybrid materials, in particular the latest break-throughs and approaches in the science of those materialsleading to the development of the new generation of mul-tifunctional materials with enhanced features and improvedproperties for the production of high-performance systemsand devices using microscopic techniques.

Conflicts of Interest

%e editors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Joanna RydzAlena Siskova

Anita Andicsova Eckstein

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