Nucleation of Plasmonic Bubbles in Binary Liquids

When a noble metal, plasmonic nanoparticle is immersed in a liquid and irradiated with a laser of resonant frequency, it can heat rapidly and a vapor bubble can be nucleated. Bubbles generated this way are called plasmonic bubbles and have garnered a lot of attention due to their variety of applications. We want to disentangle the effect of various control parameters, such as the boiling temperature, the heat conductivity, the latent heat of vaporization etc., by measurements via ultra-highspeed imaging. A perfect candidate for these measurements are binary liquids, because their parameters can be tuned by their composition. We show both experimentally and theoretically that the time of bubble nucleation is determined by the total amount of dissolved gas. In contrast, the maximum volume of the bubble is governed by the energy needed for vaporization. Consequently, the bubble's nucleation time and its maximal size can be tuned by varying the corresponding liquid parameters. We envisage that our findings will not only have important consequences for current applications, but might also result in new applications.