Approaching Six Decades!

Abstract

Dear Crystal Research and Technology readers,

In 2024, Crystal Research and Technology experienced another incredibly busy year. In our last editorial, we looked forward to the publication of several review articles on current topics, as well as a special issue on the 3^rd International Symposium on Modeling of Crystal Growth Processes and Devices (MCGPD-2023) and the 2^nd Indo-Japan Joint Workshop on Photovoltaics (IJWP-2023). We are thrilled to have achieved all this and very happy to have published 110 Research Articles and 6 Reviews in 2024. The Special Issue was a great success, with many articles related to the symposium and workshop being published.

From these numerous outstanding contributions, we have compiled a list of the most cited (Table 1) and most accessed (Table 2) articles.

While we can only present a selection of articles here, we hope to spark your interest and encourage you to explore more of our content.

First, we mention here a review published by N. S. Kumar, K. C. B. Naidu, and Basha et al., who provide a recent overview of the progress in piezoelectric materials and their limitations (crat.202200130). Liu et al., also published a review on piezoelectric materials, focusing on PVDF-Based Flexible Piezoelectric Tactile Sensors (crat.202300119).

In their research article, Kupfer et al., present a novel and facile synthesis route to obtain phase-pure Cs₂TiBr₆ and its lesser-known iodine-based counterparts Cs₂TiBr₄I₂, Cs₂TiBr₂I₄, and Cs₂TiI₆ via high-energy mechanochemical ball milling (crat.202200150).

Among our most frequently accessed articles (Table 2), we would like to highlight a review article from Mohamed et al., who give an overview on the development of α-Ga₂O₃ heteroepitaxial thin film by the mist CVD process for use in high-power devices such as Schottky barrier diodes (SBD) and field effect transistors (MOSFET) (crat.202300311). In their article, Han and Pi et al., (crat.202300354) present numerical simulations of the transport of gas species during the physical vapor transport growth of single-crystal SiC.

Finally, cerium oxide abrasive particles with two different morphologies, octahedral and spheroidal, were synthesized by solvothermal method by Ni et al. (crat.202300308).

We are confident that Crystal Research and Technology has established and will continue to strengthen its position as a leading journal in the field of crystal research. We look forward to more exciting projects and articles in the coming year, especially as we approach our 60^th anniversary in 2026.

We express our gratitude to the members of our Advisory Board, authors, reviewers, and readers for their support and interest in Crystal Research and Technology. We hope 2025 will be a productive and healthy year for everyone!

With the best wishes,,

Marc Zastrow, on behalf of the editorial team.