Bubble dynamics for broadband microrheology of complex fluids

TL;DR

This paper reviews how bubble dynamics can be used as a broadband microrheological tool to analyze the rheological properties of complex fluids across a wide frequency range, highlighting recent approaches and challenges.

Contribution

It introduces emerging methods to extract rheological information from bubble behaviors such as mass transfer, acoustic oscillations, and collapse, covering a broad frequency spectrum.

Findings

Bubble dynamics enable broadband microrheology from 10^{-4} to 10^6 Hz.

Analysis of bubble behavior provides insights into complex fluid rheology.

Challenges remain in developing robust, practical techniques.

Abstract

Bubbles in complex fluids are often desirable, and sometimes simply inevitable, in the processing of formulated products. Bubbles can rise by buoyancy, grow or dissolve by mass transfer, and readily respond to changes in pressure, thereby applying a deformation to the surrounding complex fluid. The deformation field around a stationary, spherical bubble undergoing a change in radius is simple and localised, thus making it suitable for rheological measurements. This article reviews emerging approaches to extract information on the rheology of complex fluids by analysing bubble dynamics. The focus is on three phenomena: changes in radius by mass transfer, harmonic oscillations driven by an acoustic wave, and bubble collapse. These phenomena cover a broad range of deformation frequencies, from $10^{-4}$ to $10^6$ Hz, thus paving the way to broadband microrheology using bubbles as active probes. The outstanding challenges that need to be overcome to achieve a robust technique are also discussed.