Sterilization of Biofilm in Foam Using a Single Cavitation Bubble

Abstract

This article presents the sterilization of bacteria using cavitation bubbles. Cavitation generated by ultrasound creates a cavitation cloud. Therefore is more advantageous to generate the cavitation bubbles by laser-induced breakdown, because it is possible to generate individual bubbles for the purpose of study single impact and physical mechanism of acting. The cavitation bubble is generated by a Nd: YAG 532nm laser beam, a short 10ns pulse. Here, we used optics to focus the laser beam and a high-speed camera to visualize characteristics the bubble. We used the method of long-distance microscopy and shadowgraph lightening for the visualization. We used the particle image velocimetry (PIV) method to determine the interaction of the bubble with the surrounding liquid and solid surface. The main goal of the research is to use cavitation to sterilize bacteria and biofilm in impact of single bubble collapse on living cells.