Fig. 1: Schematic concept of the underlying nanoporous layer mediation to achieve complex inter-droplet responses.
From: Droplets in underlying chemical communication recreate cell interaction behaviors
When chemically complementary drops are deposited together onto a nanoporous thin film, they interact and subsequently act by themselves via underlying chemical messages and localized activity, leading to a macroscopic response. These droplets can spontaneously evolve to a chemospecific stimulus-response operation, which resembles an emergent “intelligent” behavior. The triggered autonomous attacker-victim-like non-reciprocal interactions lead to the generation of distinctive droplet dynamics with shape-transformation and complex behaviors. Note that the schemes are out of scale (e.g., the thickness of the nanoporous thin film is about a few hundred nanometers, which is much smaller than the droplet height).
