Plasmonic Bubble Nucleation and Growth in Water: Effect of Dissolved Air

Abstract

Under continuous laser irradiation, noble metal nanoparticles immersed in water can quickly heat up, leading to the nucleation of so-called plasmonic bubbles. In this work, we want to further understand the bubble nucleation and growth mechanism. In particular, we quantitatively study the effect of the amount of dissolved air on the bubble nucleation and growth dynamics, both for the initial giant bubble, which forms shortly after switching on the laser and is mainly composed of vapor, and for the final life phase of the bubble, during which it mainly contains air expelled from water. We found that the bubble nucleation temperature depends on the gas concentration: the higher the gas concentration, the lower the bubble nucleation temperature. Also, the long-term diffusiondominated bubble growth is governed by the gas concentration. The radius of the bubbles grows as R(t)~t^1/3 for airequilibrated and air-oversaturated water. In contrast, in partially degassed water, the growth is much slower since, even for the highest temperature we achieve, the water remains undersaturated.

8 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Explosive Formation and Dynamics of Vapor Nanobubbles around a Continuously Heated Gold Nanosphere
• Entrapment of Interfacial Nanobubbles on Nano Structured Surfaces
• Plasmonic Bubbles in n-Alkanes
• Entrapment and Dissolution of Microbubbles Inside Microwells

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Periodic bouncing of a plasmonic bubble in a binary liquid by competing solutal and thermal Marangoni forces
• Plasmonic Microbubble Dynamics in Binary Liquids
• Giant plasmonic bubbles nucleation under different ambient pressures
• Droplet plume emission during plasmonic bubble growth in ternary liquids
• Laser beam properties and microfluidic confinement control thermocavitation
• Microbubble Oscillation on Localized Heat Source Affected by Dissolved Gases in Water