The rediscovery of temperature-controlled self-faceting, shaping, and splitting transitions in liquid oil-in-water emulsion droplets, has recently led to a significant progress in the fundamental understanding of these counterintuitive phenomena, sparking scientific controversies, and opening new routes towards their technological applications. These recent developments are reviewed here. The faceting transitions were demonstrated to occur in a wide range of oil:surfactant combinations, for broad temperature ranges, and in droplets of sizes spanning an incredible 13 decades in volume, from nano ($11\times {10}^{-9}$) to yocto $\left(300\times {10}^{-24}\right)$ liters. Droplets' polymerization enables forming solid faceted particles, of shapes and sizes otherwise unachievable. Colloids and nanoparticles adsorbed controllably onto the faceted liquid droplets' interfaces self-position at their vertices and self-expel into the aqueous medium. The self-positioning enables droplets’ decoration by precisely positioned functional ligands, paving the way for directed self-assembly of multiparticle structures for a wide range of microtechnological and nanotechnological applications.

重新发现水包油型液体乳状液液滴中的温度可控的自刻面，成形和分裂转变，最近已导致对这些反直觉现象的基本理解有了重大进展，引发了科学争议，并开辟了新的途径他们的技术应用。这些最新的发展在这里进行了回顾。事实证明，这些小平面过渡发生在各种各样的油：表面活性剂组合中，适用于广泛的温度范围，并且液滴的尺寸跨越了令人难以置信的13倍体积，从纳米到$11\times {10}^{-9}$）到yocto $（300\times {10}^{-24}）$升。液滴的聚合能够形成固体切面颗粒，其形状和尺寸否则是无法实现的。胶体和纳米颗粒可控地吸附到刻面液滴的界面上，并在顶点处自行定位，并自动排入水性介质中。自定位通过精确定位的功能配体实现液滴的装饰，从而为多种微技术和纳米技术应用的多颗粒结构的定向自组装铺平了道路。