Tiny bubbles can solve large problems. Microbubbles—around 1-50 micrometers in diameter—have widespread applications. They're used for drug delivery, membrane cleaning, biofilm control, and water treatment. They've been applied as actuators in lab-on-a-chip devices for microfluidic mixing, ink-jet printing, and logic circuitry, and in photonics lithography and optical resonators. And they've contributed remarkably to biomedical imaging and applications like DNA trapping and manipulation.
Given the broad range of applications for microbubbles, many methods for generating them have been developed, including air stream compression to dissolve air into liquid, ultrasound to induce bubbles in water, and laser pulses to expose substrates immersed in liquids. However, these bubbles tend to be randomly dispersed in liquid and rather unstable.
According to Baohua Jia, professor and founding director of the Centre for Translational Atomaterials at Swinburne University of Technology, "For applications requiring precise bubble position and size, as well as high stability—for example, in photonic applications like imaging and trapping—creation of bubbles at accurate positions with controllable volume, curvature, and stability is essential." Jia explains that, for integration into biological or photonic platforms, it is highly desirable to have well controlled and stable microbubbles fabricated using a technique compatible with current processing technologies.
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