This special issue of “Solid State Phenomena” documents some novel experimental and theoretical approaches applied to fascinating materials. Motivated by the increasing need to synthesize and understand the properties of technologically important materials, this issue represents an important step forward in improving our understanding of how modern materials can be optimised for technology and industry. The issue comprises 9 original review papers covering experimental approaches and theoretical modeling. The contributions will be very useful to researchers working in various areas of CMP and will contribute significantly to the understanding of rapidly developing materials with regard to their synthesis, characterization and properties.

Recently there have been profound developments in the understanding and interpretation of liquids and soft matter centered on constituents with sho- range interactions. Ionic soft matter is a class of conventional condensed soft matter with prevailing contribution from electrostatics and, therefore, can be subject to possible long-range correlations among the components of the - terial and in many cases crucially affecting its physical properties. Among the most popular representatives of such a class of materials are natural and synthetic saline environments, like aqueous and non-aqueous electrolyte - lutions and molten salts as well as variety of polyelectrolytes and colloidal suspensions. Equally well known are biological systems of proteins. All these systems are examples of soft matter strongly in?uenced, if not dominated, by long-range forces. For more than half of century the classical theories by Debye and Hückel as well as by Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey and Owerbeek (DLVO) have been at the basis of theoretical physical chemistry and chemical engineering. The substantial progress in material science during last few decades as well as the advent of new instrumentation and computational techniques made it apparent that in many cases the classical theories break down. New types of interactions (e.g. hydrodynamic, entropic) have been discovered and a number of questions have arisen from theoretical and experimental studies. Many of these questions still do not have de?nite answers.

Comprehensive and accessible coverage from the basics to advanced topics in modern quantum condensed matter physics.