Quorum Sensing in Emulsion Droplet Swarms Driven by a Surfactant Competition System.

Quorum sensing enables unicellular organisms to probe their population density and perform behavior that exclusively occurs above a critical density. Quorum sensing is established in emulsion droplet swarms that float at a water surface and cluster above a critical density. The design involves competition between 1) a surface tension gradient that is generated upon release of a surfactant from the oil droplets, and thereby drives their mutual repulsion, and 2) the release of a surfactant precursor from the droplets, that forms a strong imine surfactant which suppresses the surface tension gradient and thereby causes droplet clustering upon capillary (Cheerios) attraction.

Reconfigurable Droplet-Droplet Communication Mediated by Photochemical Marangoni Flows.

Droplets are attractive building blocks for dynamic matter that organizes into adaptive structures. Communication among collectively operating droplets opens untapped potential in settings that vary from sensing, optics, protocells, computing, or adaptive matter. Inspired by the transmission of signals among decentralized units in slime mold , we introduce a combination of surfactants, self-assembly, and photochemistry to establish chemical signal transfer among droplets.

Spatial programming of self-organizing chemical systems using sustained physicochemical gradients from reaction, diffusion and hydrodynamics.

Living organisms employ chemical self-organization to build structures, and inspire new strategies to design synthetic systems that spontaneously take a particular form, a combination of integrated chemical reactions, assembly pathways and physicochemical processes. However, spatial programmability that is required to direct such self-organization is a challenge to control. Thermodynamic equilibrium typically brings about a homogeneous solution, or equilibrium structures such as supramolecular complexes and crystals.