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Collapse of Surface Nanobubbles

Chon U. Chan, Longquan Chen, Manish Arora, and Claus-Dieter Ohl
Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 114505 – Published 19 March 2015
Physics logo See Synopsis: Bubbles Pop, Droplets Don’t
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Abstract

Surface attached nanobubbles populate surfaces submerged in water. These nanobubbles have a much larger contact angle and longer lifetime than predicted by classical theory. Moreover, it is difficult to distinguish them from hydrophobic droplets, e.g., polymeric contamination, using standard atomic force microscopy. Here, we report fast dynamics of a three phase contact line moving over surface nanobubbles, polymeric droplets, and hydrophobic particles. The dynamics is distinct: across polymeric droplets the contact line quickly jumps and hydrophobic particles pin the contact line, while surface nanobubbles rapidly shrink once merging with the contact line, suggesting a method to differentiate nanoscopic gaseous, liquid, and solid structures. Although the collapse process of surface nanobubbles occurs within a few milliseconds, we show that it is dominated by microscopic dynamics rather than bulk hydrodynamics.

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  • Received 14 November 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.114505

© 2015 American Physical Society

Synopsis

Key Image

Bubbles Pop, Droplets Don’t

Published 19 March 2015

A new technique can unambiguously identify nanobubbles living on the surface of a submerged object.

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Authors & Affiliations

Chon U. Chan, Longquan Chen, Manish Arora, and Claus-Dieter Ohl*

  • School of Physical and Mathematical Science, Nanyang Technological University, 21 Nanyang Link, 637371 Singapore

  • *To whom all correspondence should be addressed. cdohl@ntu.edu.sg

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Issue

Vol. 114, Iss. 11 — 20 March 2015

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