Crystal Patterning from Aqueous Solutions via Solutal Instabilities.

Fluid instabilities can be harnessed for facile self-assembly of patterned structures on the nano- and microscale. Evaporative self-assembly from drops is one simple technique that enables a range of patterning behaviors due to the multitude of fluid instabilities that arise due to the simultaneous existence of temperature and solutal gradients. However, the method suffers from limited controllability over patterns that can arise and their morphology.

Experimental Evidence for Three Universality Classes for Reaction Fronts in Disordered Flows.

Self-sustained reaction fronts in a disordered medium subject to an external flow display self-affine roughening, pinning, and depinning transitions. We measure spatial and temporal fluctuations of the front in 1+1 dimensions, controlled by a single parameter, the mean flow velocity. Three distinct universality classes are observed, consistent with the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) class for fast advancing or receding fronts, the quenched KPZ class (positive-qKPZ) when the mean flow approximately cancels the reaction rate, and the negative-qKPZ class for slowly receding fronts.

Autocatalytic reaction fronts inside a porous medium of glass spheres.

We analyze experimentally chemical wave propagation in the disordered flow field of a porous medium. The reaction fronts travel at a constant velocity that drastically depends on the mean flow direction and rate. The fronts may propagate either downstream and upstream but, surprisingly, they remain static over a range of flow rate values.