Acoustic Rising Microbubbles for Efficient Liquid Operations

Efficient liquid manipulation is crucial in chemical engineering, biological research, clinical applications, and materials science. Bubbles, such as boiling, rising, and cavitating bubbles, have been widely employed to enhance mixing and mass transfer through their unique hydrodynamic behaviors. Yet, conventional bubble-based approaches often face limited scalability and poor performance in high-viscosity environments. Here, we introduce a strategy that employs low-energy acoustic excitation of rising microbubbles to achieve scalable and efficient mass transfer across macroscale and microscale domains. By coupling buoyancy-driven convection with localized acoustic microstreaming, acoustic rising microbubbles simultaneously extend the operational workspace and intensify local mass transfer. Particle image velocimetry and computational fluid dynamics analyses characterize the distinct contributions of buoyancy-induced flows, acoustically induced microstreaming, and their superimposed effects. Various chemical and biomedical applications, including efficient high-viscosity mixing, accelerated chemical material synthesis, altered cell membrane permeability, promoted cell lysis, and thrombus clearance, demonstrate the great potential of the proposed acoustic rising bubbles for efficient mass transfer in laboratory and industrial liquid manipulations.