Complex emulsions for chemical signal processing - opening up new technologies, drop by drop

Emulsions are a central part of our daily lives. Dispersions of oil-in-water or water-in-oil are used in a variety of everyday products such as food, cosmetics and medical articles, paints and detergents. In addition to the investigation of classical single-component droplet systems, we are increasingly focusing on the production and investigation of emulsions consisting of multiphase droplets, so-called complex emulsions. Here we observed a unique chemically stimulable behaviour of such multi-component systems, which enable the development of new and improved applications of emulsions from biomimetics and biosensorics to the construction of autonomously acting, artificially intelligent microreactors.