  The unique ability of chaotic advection under micro-scale confinement to
direct chemical processes along accelerated kinetic pathways has long been
recognized. But practical applications have been slow to emerge because optimal
results are often counter-intuitively achieved in flows that appear to possess
undesirably high disorder. Here we demonstrate how thermally actuated chaotic
phenomena within these microenvironments are capable of establishing a
continuous conveyor transporting chemical compounds from the bulk to targeted
locations on solid boundaries where they become greatly enriched. These
findings intriguingly suggest that microscale chaotic advection may offer a
new- mechanism to explain emergence of biomolecular complexity from dilute
organic precursors in the prebiotic milieu-a key unanswered question in the
origin of life. We further show how these flows can be rationally designed and
harnessed to execute bulk biochemical processes with a level of robustness
previously thought unattainable.
