LAUSR

The interaction of rising gas bubbles with submerged air-repelling or air-attracting surfaces is relevant to various technological applications that rely on gas micro-volume handling or removal. This work demonstrates how submerged metal meshes with super air-attracting/repelling properties can be employed to manipulate micro-volumes of air, rising buoyantly in the form of bubbles in water. Super-aerophobic meshes are observed to selectively allow the passage of air bubbles depending on the mesh pore size, the bubble volume-equivalent diameter, and the bubble impact velocity on the mesh. Differently, super-aerophilic meshes reduce or amplify the volume captured from a train of incoming bubbles. Finally, a wettability spatial pattern on the mesh is used to control the size of the outgoing bubble, and an empirical relation is formulated to predict the released volume. The study demonstrates how porous materials with controlled wettability can be used to precisely modulate and control the outcome of bubble/mesh interactions.