Thermal oscillations of nanobubbles

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Nanobubble cavitation is advancing technologies in enhanced wastewater treatment, cancer therapy and diagnosis, and microfluidic cleaning. Current macroscale models predict that nanobubble oscillations should be isothermal, yet recent studies suggest that they are adiabatic with an associated increase in natural frequency, which becomes challenging when characterizing nanobubble sizes using ultrasound in experiments. We derive a new theoretical model that considers the nonideal nature of the nanobubble’s internal gas phase and nonequilibrium effects, by employing the van der Waals (vdW) equation of state and implementing a temperature jump term at the liquid–gas interface, respectively, finding excellent agreement with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Our results reveal how adiabatic behavior could be erroneously interpreted when analyzing the thermal response of the gas using the commonly employed polytropic process and explain instead how nanobubble oscillations are physically closer to their isothermal limit.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)10841-10847
JournalNano Letters
Volume23
Issue number23
Early online date4 Dec 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Dec 2023

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