Tiny Drops, Big Impact:
Dr. Lukas Zeininger Receives Zsigmondy Prize for Research on Intelligent Droplet Systems
The German Colloid Society’s Young Investigator Award acknowledges Zeininger's work in predicting and controlling the behavior of soft materials outside of thermodynamic equilibrium, as well as his establishment of guidelines for next-generation smart materials capable of responding to external stimuli in real time.

Take a spoonful of oil and try mixing it with water. Even with vigorous stirring, the oil quickly separates and rises to the surface. This separation, right before your eyes, exemplifies nature’s tendency to settle into equilibrium.
But what if we could control and harness this tendency of oil droplets to merge and separate from water?
This is the question that drives Dr. Lukas Zeininger’s research in the Colloid Chemistry Department. He studies systems that resist equilibrium, aiming to develop artificial intelligent materials that stay in constant flux, much like living matter. These materials can respond autonomously to their environment and hold potential for use in advanced drug delivery, catalysis, sensors, and soft robotics. The German Society for Colloid Chemistry awarded Zeininger the prize, named after Nobel laureate Richard A. Zsigmondy, in recognition of his work capturing droplets' adaptive capabilities for practical applications.
Consider our initial oil-in-water emulsion: if left undisturbed, smaller droplets coalesce while larger droplets merge, eventually forming an oil layer atop the water. As mentioned earlier, this happens because systems naturally pursue equilibrium. But life defies this tendency, operating outside of equilibrium and actively resisting it. Plants orient themselves to sunlight, cells grow and divide, and immune systems react to environmental stimuli. All of these processes require energy and change, demonstrating that non-equilibrium states make life possible and allow living organisms to adapt.
At a fundamental level, Zeininger uncovers how non-equilibrium systems function. In living cells, countless droplets respond dynamically to changes in temperature, pressure, or chemical signals to perform specialized functions. Zeininger’s team develops synthetic matter with similar dynamic properties, coating droplets with surfactants to prevent their collapse. They then observe how droplets adjust to shifting environments, providing new insights into life’s smallest functional units. In one model, for instance, droplets sensed a bacterium and bound to it until it was destroyed.
But the group’s ambitions go beyond biological curiosity: inspired by natural systems, they want to redefine materials. We often think of materials as static, expecting steel or silicon to perform consistently according to the properties engineered into them. Zeininger and his team are laying the groundwork for their intelligent counterparts—synthetic adaptive materials that, like biological systems, can modulate their properties in real time.
Based on observations of the simplified droplet systems in the lab, the team predicts how materials detect external energy gradients and adjust accordingly.
The Zsigmondy Prize recognizes Zeininger's translation of fundamental physico-chemical principles from life’s building blocks into foundational knowledge for sustainable, transformative technologies.
With a twist on the popular saying, small drops can indeed create a mighty ocean …of change.