The authors write this in the conclusion of their paper:
> Thus, we anticipate that our results and conclusions are valid for a broad class of systems and may open routes to many future enterprises including the structuring of fluids, the visualization of chemical traces, the assembling of functional objects like actuators or drug carriers, information storage, and numerous artistical applications. Finally, our results could also be used to prepare desired initial states for future colloid experiments, e.g., on collective diffusion. Drawing fine lines, durable patterns, and individual letters into water was only the first step.
I think if you start consider what it does to enthalpy and entropy at the microscale and then consider how to use that to modify dynamics (i.e. reactions in progress) you can start to do some pretty fun things.
