Traces of nanobubbles determine nano-boiling

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Ultra-highspeed photographs of microbubbles forming on a microheater show the effect of residual nanobubbles between heating pulses. The first pulse of a two-pulse sequence (a) produces nearly identical microbubbles time after time but the second pul ...
Ultra-highspeed photographs of microbubbles forming on a microheater show the effect of residual nanobubbles between heating pulses. The first pulse of a two-pulse sequence (a) produces nearly identical microbubbles time after time, but the second pulse (b) produces a random assortment of bubbles of varying sizes. Vertical bar shows a distance of 15 micrometers. Credit: NIST

Using a microscope and some extreme “snapshot” photography with shutter speeds only a few nanoseconds long, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Cornell University have uncovered the traces of ephemeral “nanobubbles” formed in boiling water on a microheater. Their observations suggest an added complexity to the everyday phenomenon of boiling, and may affect technologies as diverse as inkjet printers and some proposed cancer therapies.


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