Near-infrared-laser-navigated dancing bubble within water via a thermally conductive interface

Man Hu (), Feng Wang, Li Chen, Peng Huo, Yuqi Li, Xi Gu, Kai Leong Chong and Daosheng Deng ()
Additional contact information
Man Hu: Fudan University
Feng Wang: Fudan University
Li Chen: Fudan University
Peng Huo: Fudan University
Yuqi Li: Fudan University
Xi Gu: Fudan University
Kai Leong Chong: Shanghai University
Daosheng Deng: Fudan University

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Precise manipulation of droplets or bubbles hosts a broad range of applications for microfluidic devices, drug delivery, and soft robotics. Generally the existing approaches via passively designing structured surfaces or actively applying external stimuli, inherently confine their motions within the planar or curved geometry at a slow speed. Consequently the realization of 3D manipulation, such as of the underwater bubbles, remains challenging. Here, during the near-infrared-laser impacting on water, by simply introducing a thermally conductive interface, we unexpectedly observe a spontaneously bouncing bubble with hundreds-of-micrometer diameter at tens-of-Hertz frequency. The unique formation of temperature inversion layer in our system generates the depth-dependent thermal Marangoni force responsible for the bouncing behavior. Both the scaling analysis and numerical simulation agree with observations quantitatively. Furthermore, by controlling the navigation speed of the laser beam, the bubble not only shows excellent steerability with velocity up to 40 mm/s, but also exhibits distinctive behaviors from bouncing to dancing within water. We demonstrate the potential applications by steering the bubble within water to specifically interact with tiny objects, shedding light on the fabrication of bubble-based compositions in materials science and contamination removal in water treatment.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33424-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-33424-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33424-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().