From Chemical Gardens to Chemobrionics

Chemical gardens are perhaps the best example in chemistry of a-organizing nonequilibrium process that creates complex. Many different chemical systems and materials can these self-assembling structures, which span at least 8 of magnitude in size, from nanometers to meters. Key to marvel is the self-propagation under fluid advection of zones forming semipermeable precipitation membranes maintain steep concentration gradients, with osmosis and as the driving forces for fluid flow. Chemical gardens been studied from the alchemists onward, but now in the21st century we are beginning to understand how they can lead to a new domain of self-organized structures of semipermeable and amorphous as well as polycrystalline solids at the interface of chemistry, fluid dynamics, and science. We propose to call this emerging field.