Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter regularly features content from the liquids and soft matter research community. In the recent JPCM 9^th Liquid Matter Conference special issue, we invite readers to explore the exciting developments presented at the Ninth Liquid Matter Conference – Liquids 2014, held at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, 21–25 July 2014.

The issue’s Narrative, written by Guest Editors José Maria Tavares, Margarida Telo da Gama, Maria da Graça Miguel and Paulo Teixeira, provides a fantastic overview of the many conference highlights, awards, and prizes.

The conference comprised 11 plenary lectures, 25 keynote lectures, 93 contributed talks and 520 posters… In common with earlier editions of the Liquid Matter Conference, the most popular topics were Colloids and Confined Fluids, which together accounted for one-third of contributed talks and 40% of all posters. However the trend already identified at Liquids 2011 – a shift within the community towards non-equilibrium and biological or bio-inspired systems – looks set to continue.

The issue’s Preface gives an equally enticing glimpse of the range of research presented at Liquids 2014 and reflected in the JPCM special issue. The topics covered are:

• Ionic liquids and liquid metals
• Water and solutions
• Liquid crystals
• Polymers, polyelectrolytes, biopolymers
• Colloids
• Films, foams, surfactants, emulsions
• Confined fluids, interfacial phenomena
• Supercooled liquids, glasses, gels
• Driven systems, rheology and nanofluidics
• Active matter
• Biological and biomimetic fluids

We hope that readers will enjoy the full collection of papers in the JPCM 9^th Liquid Matter Conference special issue, which is available now.

Front page thumbnail image adapted from Patrick Degen et al 2015 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 27 194105 Copyright IOP Publishing 2015.

Categories: Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter

Tags: Colloids, Condensed matter physics, Conference, Glasses, Ionic liquids, Liquid crystals, Liquids, Polymers, Soft matter, Special Issue