Leading Japanese Research Institute Characterise Nanobubbles

摘要

NanoSight are happy to report that Kaneo Chiba and Masayoshi Takahashi of Japan's famous AIST research centre are using nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) technology to characterise nanobubbles.They have shown that in the presence of electrolytes and with the correct physical stimulus, stable nanobubbles can be formed from conventional microbubbles. The latter either tend to coalesce to larger buoyant bubbles that float away or collapse under intense surface tension-derived pressure to the point they vanish as predicted by theory. The addition of salt (electrolytes) however, is thought to cause the formation of a counter-ion screen around nanobubbles, which effectively blocks the ability of gases within the nanobubbles to diffuse out. This was confirmed by electrophoresis studies in which the zeta potential of nanobubbles was shown to be related to nanobubbles stability.