We discuss the basic physics of the flow of micron-scale droplets in 2D geometry. Our focus is on the use of droplet ensembles to look into fundamental questions of non-equilibrium systems, such as the emergence of dynamic patterns and irreversibility. We review recent research in these directions, which demonstrate that 2D microfluidics is uniquely set to study complex out-of-equilibrium phenomena thanks to the simplicity of the underlying Stokes flow and the accessibility of lab-on-chip technology.

中文翻译：

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驱动粒子的二维流：通往非平衡前沿的微流通道

我们讨论了二维几何中微米级液滴流动的基本物理原理。我们的重点是使用液滴集成来研究非平衡系统的基本问题，例如动态模式的出现和不可逆性。我们回顾了这些方向上的最新研究，这些研究表明，由于底层Stokes流的简单性和片上实验室技术的可访问性，二维微流体被独特地用于研究复杂的失衡现象。