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Abstract

Droplets abound in nature and technology. In general, they are
multicomponent, and, when out of equilibrium, have gradients in concentration,
implying flow and mass transport. Moreover, phase transitions can occur, in the form
of evaporation, solidification, dissolution or nucleation of a new phase. The droplets
and their surrounding liquid can be binary, ternary or contain even more
components, with several in different phases. Since the early 2000s, rapid advances
in experimental and numerical fluid dynamical techniques have enabled major
progress in our understanding of the physicochemical hydrodynamics of such
droplets, further narrowing the gap from fluid dynamics to chemical engineering
and colloid and interfacial science, arriving at a quantitative understanding of
multicomponent and multiphase droplet systems far from equilibrium, and aiming
towards a one-to-one comparison between experiments and theory or numerics.
This Perspective discusses examples of the physicochemical hydrodynamics
of droplet systems far from equilibrium and the relevance of such systems
for applications.