Photonics in soft matters, including liquid crystals, polymers, gels, biotissues, and bioinspired materials, is a burgeoning and important field and attracting much attention recently. Compared to solid matters, soft matters have some inherent advantages such as excellent tunability, high flexibility, scalable size, easy fabrication, and adaptation to environments. The variety of interesting properties in soft matters deserves not only fundamental researches but also potential applications, especially on photonics. Therefore, this topic focuses on researches about soft matter photonics.

This special issue aims to attract researches about soft matter photonics and promote the developments of the related applications. All papers about soft matter photonics are encouraged to submit to this special issue, including preparation of soft matters for photonic applications, discussion of mechanisms in soft matter photonics, and demonstration of photonic devices based on soft matters.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Liquid-crystal photonics/photonic applications
• Novel polymers for photonics
• Stimuli-responsive elastomers for photonics
• Functional gels for photonics
• Biophotonics
• Cellulose nanocrystals for photonics
• Self-assembled materials for photonics