Themed collection Chemical Physics of Electroactive Materials

We are delighted to share with you a selection of the papers which will be presented at our Faraday Discussion on Chemical Physics of Electroactive Materials taking place in Cambridge, UK in April 2017. More information about the event may be found here: http://rsc.li/electroactive-fd2017. Additional articles will be added to the collection as they are published. The final versions of all the articles presented and record of the live discussions will be published after the event.

There is currently a great interest in finding new ways of in situ control of structure and dynamical properties of materials at the micro and nano scales. One of the most attractive routes is to use variation of applied voltage, an approach shared by a wide spectrum of disciplines including nano- and micro-fluidics, optofluidics, nanotribology, microrobotics,and tunable optical metamaterials. With portable applications and energy saving demands in mind, the most promising scenarios are related to ultra-low voltage control. The latter is generally achievable under electrochemical conditions which require involvement of electrolytic components and electrical double layer effects at the nanoscale.