The observation of the amazing life of small water droplets and their bizarre collective behavior is not only a fascinating experience. Such phenomena, although invisible to the human eye, determine large-scale physical processes in the Earth’s atmosphere and in the surface layer of the world ocean. This is enough to understand the continuing interest of researchers, who for many years have been working to understand the physical laws of what at first was a mere wonder. Due to circumstances, the authors of this monograph got involved in a particular but very interesting problem related to the self-arrangement of regular structures from micron-sized droplets levitating over the locally heated water surface. The joint experimental and theoretical work has generated a number of original results, which have been published in leading international journals. To date, we have not only begun to understand some features of cluster formation and life, but we have also learned to a certain extent how to control levitating droplet clusters. Moreover, we have managed to come close to solving practical problems in studying biochemical processes in individual droplets, which can be used as unique microreactors. At this stage, the authors have a need for a systematic presentation of the main results obtained over the years of joint work. The presentation of the material in Levitating Droplet Clusters corresponds to the real sequence of solutions and the main stages of our work.


196 pages,© 2023