- J. Čejková, M.M.Hanczyc, F. Štěpánek, (2018). Multi-Armed Droplets as Shape-Changing Protocells, Artificial Life, 24 (1), 71-79.
- Čejková J., Štěpánek F., Hanczyc M. (2016), Evaporation-induced pattern formation of decanol droplets, Langmuir 32, 4800-4805.
Pattern formation in far from equilibrium systems is observed in several disciplines including biology and reaction-diffusion chemistry, comprising both living and non-living systems. We aim to study such non-equilibrium dynamics of a novel system based on a 1-decanol droplet placed in a solution of alkaline decanoate. Recently, we have found that when the system is open to the environment and the evaporation of water from decanoate solution occurs we observe dramatic morphological changes of the decanol droplet. Moreover in the presence of sodium chloride it shows a novel type of pattern formation, namely the formation of long tentacular structures that we aim to analyse within present project at both the macroscopic and microscopic scale across a large range of initial conditions. Such reproducible morphological changes in simple droplets open a path for exploration of shape-based effects in larger scale pattern formation studies.
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