The journal’s submission platform Editorial Manager is available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue from Jul 1, 2026 on. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript, and select the article type of " VSI: ISF Workshop " when submitting your manuscript online. 

This Special Issue is aligned with the scientific framework and objectives of the ISF workshop series, a biennial forum dedicated to advancing understanding and predictive modeling of reacting flows involving carbonaceous nanoparticles. The ISF promotes coordinated experimental and computational research, benchmark flames and reactors, open datasets, and rigorous model validation to improve predictive capabilities across soot-forming environments.

The issue welcomes original research articles on the formation, evolution, characterization, and modeling of soot and related carbon nanoparticles in combustion, pyrolysis, and high-temperature reacting flows. Contributions integrating experiments and simulations, benchmark datasets, or emerging challenges in low-carbon energy systems and emissions control are strongly encouraged.

Topics of interest include:

·           Soot inception, gas-to-particle transition chemistry, and PAH formation and growth;

·           Chemical kinetics of inception, surface growth, oxidation, fragmentation, and particle evolution;

·           Atomistic simulations, molecular modeling, reduced-order methods, and AI/ML-based soot prediction;

·           Nanostructure evolution, aggregate dynamics, morphology, optical properties, and physicochemical characterization;

·           Advanced diagnostics for soot precursors, particle maturity, and condensed-phase evolution;

·           Benchmark flames and reactors, uncertainty quantification, and model validation;

·           High-fidelity simulations of laminar, turbulent, and pressurized soot-forming flows;

·           Population balance, sectional, moment, and CFD-based soot and aerosol models;

·           Pyrolysis of gaseous, liquid, and solid fuels, including biomass, polymers, waste fuels, and methane pyrolysis for H₂ and carbon co-production;

·           Soot and particulate emissions from combustion systems using conventional and next-generation fuels, including SAFs, oxygenated fuels, hydrogen- and ammonia-containing blends;

·           Soot formation in wildland and Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) fires and large-scale fire environments;

·           Carbon nanoparticle synthesis and applications in advanced materials, emissions mitigation, and energy technologies.

By bringing together coordinated international efforts in experiments, diagnostics, chemistry, and simulation, this Special Issue aims to advance understanding of soot formation and support predictive tools for cleaner combustion, emissions mitigation, and emerging energy technologies.

For consistency, contributors may wish to consult the terminology recommendations of Michelsen et al. (ACS Nano, 2020), while recognizing that their adoption is not a requirement.