Caging bubbles to develop high-resolution microscopes

Bubbles are ubiquitous in many research applications, from ultrasound imaging to understanding volcanic eruptions. They are also excellent acoustic resonators, being very small in size compared to the wavelength of the sound they emit. These resonant sound waves contain information about the mechanical properties of materials in the immediate vicinity of the bubble. In a recent publication in Nature Communications, a collaboration between LIPhy's Optima and Move teams proposes to exploit this phenomenon to image a sample by moving a bubble in its vicinity.