Microbubble formation and pinch-off scaling exponent in flow-focusing devices

We investigate the gas jet breakup and the resulting microbubble formation in a microfluidic flow-focusing device using ultra high-speed imaging at 1 × 106 frames/s. In recent experiments [Dollet et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 034504 (2008)], it was found that in the final stage of the collapse the radius of the neck scales with time with a 1/3 power-law exponent, which suggested that gas inertia and the Bernoulli suction effect become important. Here, ultra high-speed imaging was used to capture the complete bubble contour and quantify the gas flow through the neck. The high temporal resolution images enable us to approach the final moment of pinch-off to within 1 μs. It revealed that during the collapse, the flow of gas reverses and accelerates towards its maximum velocity at the moment of pinch-off. However, the resulting decrease in pressure, due to Bernoulli suction, is too low to account for the accelerated collapse. We observe two stages of the collapse process. At first, the neck collapses with a scaling exponent of 1/3 which is explained by a "filling effect." In the final stage, the collapse is characterized by a scaling exponent of 2/5, which can be derived, based on the observation that during the collapse the neck becomes less slender, due to the driving through liquid inertia. However, surface tension forces are still important until the final microsecond before pinch-off.