- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review X

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Featured in Physics
  • Open Access

Smectic and Soap Bubble Optofluidic Lasers

Zala Korenjak1,2 and Matjaž Humar1,2,3,*

  • 1Condensed Matter Department, J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • 2Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Jadranska 19, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • 3CENN Nanocenter, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

  • *matjaz.humar@ijs.si
PDF

Phys. Rev. X 14, 011002 – Published 5 January, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.011002

Abstract

Soap bubbles are simple, yet very unique and marvelous objects. They exhibit a number of interesting properties such as beautiful interference colors and the formation of minimal surfaces. Various optical phenomena have been studied in soap films and bubbles, but so far they have not been employed as optical cavities. Here we demonstrate that dye doped soap or smectic liquid crystal bubbles can support whispering gallery mode lasing, which is observed in the spectrum as hundreds of regularly spaced peaks, resembling a frequency comb. The lasing enabled the measurement of size changes as small as 10 nm in a millimeter-sized, ∼100−nm-thick bubble. Bubble lasers were used as extremely sensitive electric field sensors with a smallest measurable electric field of 110  Vm−1 Hz−1/2. They also enable the measurement of pressures up to a 100 bar with a resolution of 1.5 Pa, resulting in a dynamic range of almost 107. By connecting the bubble to a reservoir of air, almost arbitrarily low pressure changes can be measured while maintaining an outstanding dynamic range. The demonstrated soap bubble lasers are a very unique type of microcavities which are one of the best electric field and pressure microsensors to date and could in the future also be employed to study thin films and cavity optomechanics.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Focus

A Soap Bubble Becomes a Laser

Published 5 January, 2024

Using a soap bubble, researchers have created a laser that could act as a sensitive sensor for environmental parameters including atmospheric pressure.

See more in Physics

Popular Summary

A soap bubble is a thin film composed of water and surfactants, which encloses air and forms a spherical shape. Soap bubbles exhibit many interesting properties such as beautiful interference colors and the formation of minimal surfaces. But one aspect that has not yet been explored is their potential ability to act as a type of optical cavity, circulating light that is trapped within. Here, we do just that and demonstrate for the first time that soap bubbles can be used as lasers.

In our experiments, we dope soap bubbles—attached to a tube or free floating in a container—with a fluorescent dye and pump them with an external laser. The generated light circulates in the wall of the bubble, which consequently works as a laser cavity. We also make bubbles from surfactantlike molecules without any water present. Such bubbles have a completely uniform thickness with an integer number of molecular layers. Most importantly, they are extremely stable and can in principle survive indefinitely. In both types of bubbles, we observe whispering gallery mode lasing as sharp peaks in the spectrum of the emitted light. Shifts in the lasing wavelengths reveal subtle changes in the bubble size as small as 10 nm. This incredible precision allows us to use the bubbles as one of the best pressure and electric field sensors.

Because of their unique properties, soap bubble lasers could in the future be used as tunable laser sources and extremely sensitive sensors.

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (55)

  1. C. Isenberg, The Science of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles (Tieto, Clevedon, England, 1978).
  2. Y. Afanasyev, G. T. Andrews, and C. Deacon, Measuring soap bubble thickness with color matching, Am. J. Phys. 79, 1079 (2011).
  3. F. J. Almgren and J. E. Taylor, The geometry of soap films and soap bubbles, Sci. Am. 235, 82 (1976).
  4. J. E. Taylor, The structure of singularities in soap-bubble-like and soap-film-like minimal surfaces, Ann. Math. 103, 489 (1976).
  5. G. d. Debrégeas, P.-G. De Gennes, and F. Brochard-Wyart, The life and death of “bare” viscous bubbles, Science 279, 1704 (1998).
  6. T. Meuel et al., Intensity of vortices: From soap bubbles to hurricanes, Sci. Rep. 3, 1 (2013).
  7. U. Kornek, F. Müller, K. Harth, A. Hahn, S. Ganesan, L. Tobiska, and R. Stannarius, Oscillations of soap bubbles, New J. Phys. 12, 073031 (2010).
  8. A. Patsyk, U. Sivan, M. Segev, and M. A. Bandres, Observation of branched flow of light, Nature (London) 583, 60 (2020).
  9. R. Stannarius and C. Cramer, Self-supporting bubbles of thermotropic smectic liquid crystals, Europhys. Lett. 42, 43 (1998).
  10. K. May, K. Harth, T. Trittel, and R. Stannarius, Dynamics of freely floating smectic bubbles, Europhys. Lett. 100, 16003 (2012).
  11. N. A. Clark et al., Realization of hydrodynamic experiments on quasi-2D liquid crystal films in microgravity, Adv. Space Res. 60, 737 (2017).
  12. T. Lopez-Leon, A. Fernandez-Nieves, M. Nobili, and C. Blanc, Nematic-smectic transition in spherical shells, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 247802 (2011).
  13. M. Sumetsky, Y. Dulashko, and R. Windeler, Optical microbubble resonator, Opt. Lett. 35, 898 (2010).
  14. A. Watkins, J. Ward, Y. Wu, and S. N. Chormaic, Single-input spherical microbubble resonator, Opt. Lett. 36, 2113 (2011).
  15. S. I. Shopova, H. Zhou, X. Fan, and P. Zhang, Optofluidic ring resonator based dye laser, Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 221101 (2007).
  16. J. M. Ward, N. Dhasmana, and S. N. Chormaic, Hollow core, whispering gallery resonator sensors, Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 223, 1917 (2014).
  17. Y.-C. Chen, Q. Chen, and X. Fan, Lasing in blood, Optica 3, 809 (2016).
  18. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.011002 for additional figures, measurements, additional table with the comparison of pressure sensors and Supplemental Video descriptions.
  19. K. Kawano and T. Kitoh, Introduction to Optical Waveguide Analysis: Solving Maxwell’s Equation and the Schrödinger Equation (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2004).
  20. C. Zhang, A. Cocking, E. Freeman, Z. Liu, and S. Tadigadapa, On-chip glass microspherical shell whispering gallery mode resonators, Sci. Rep. 7, 1 (2017).
  21. R. Stannarius, C. Cramer, and H. Schüring, Self-supporting smectic bubbles, Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst. 329, 423 (1999).
  22. G. Mirri, M. Škarabot, and I. Muševič, In situ laser-imprinted surface realignment of a nematic liquid crystal, Soft Matter 11, 3347 (2015).
  23. M. Vellaichamy, M. Škarabot, and I. Muševič, Optical gain and photo-bleaching of organic dyes, quantum dots, perovskite nanoplatelets and nanodiamonds, Liq. Cryst. 50, 935 (2023).
  24. M. Lyu and C. Gmachl, Correction to the effective refractive index and the confinement factor in waveguide modeling for quantum cascade lasers, OSA Contin. 4, 2275 (2021).
  25. Y. Ishii and Y. Tabe, Gas permeation of LC films observed by smectic bubble expansion, Eur. Phys. J. E 30, 257 (2009).
  26. Y. Ishii, S.-Y. Sugisawa, and Y. Tabe, Anomalous deformation of smectic bubbles under DC electric field, Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst. 549, 166 (2011).
  27. A. Kiraz, Y. Karadağ, and A. Coskun, Spectral tuning of liquid microdroplets standing on a superhydrophobic surface using electrowetting, Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 191104 (2008).
  28. A. R. Ali, T. Ioppolo, and M. Ötügen, High-resolution electric field sensor based on whispering gallery modes of a beam-coupled dielectric resonator, in Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Engineering and Technology (ICET) (IEEE, New York, 2012).
  29. M. Humar, M. Ravnik, S. Pajk, and I. Muševič, Electrically tunable liquid crystal optical microresonators, Nat. Photonics 3, 595 (2009).
  30. A. Kainz, H. Steiner, J. Schalko, A. Jachimowicz, F. Kohl, M. Stifter, R. Beigelbeck, F. Keplinger, and W. Hortschitz, Distortion-free measurement of electric field strength with a MEMS sensor, National electronics review 1, 68 (2018).
  31. Z. Han, J. Hu, L. Li, and J. He, Micro-cantilever electric field sensor driven by electrostatic force, Engineering 24, 184 (2022).
  32. F. Xue et al., Piezoelectric–piezoresistive coupling MEMS sensors for measurement of electric fields of broad bandwidth and large dynamic range, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics 67, 551 (2019).
  33. B. Zhang et al., Review of surface transient charge measurement on solid insulating materials via the Pockels technique, High Volt. 6, 608 (2021).
  34. V. Calero et al., An ultra wideband-high spatial resolution-compact electric field sensor based on lab-on-fiber technology, Sci. Rep. 9, 8058 (2019).
  35. T. Zhu, L. Zhou, M. Liu, J. Zhang, and L. Shi, High sensitive space electric field sensing based on micro fiber interferometer with field force driven gold nanofilm, Sci. Rep. 5, 1 (2015).
  36. F. Dolde et al., Electric-field sensing using single diamond spins, Nat. Phys. 7, 459 (2011).
  37. E. H. Chen, H. A. Clevenson, K. A. Johnson, L. M. Pham, D. R. Englund, P. R. Hemmer, and D. A. Braje, High-sensitivity spin-based electrometry with an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, Phys. Rev. A 95, 053417 (2017).
  38. T. Ioppolo and M. V. Ötügen, Pressure tuning of whispering gallery mode resonators, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 24, 2721 (2007).
  39. R. Henze, T. Seifert, J. Ward, and O. Benson, Tuning whispering gallery modes using internal aerostatic pressure, Opt. Lett. 36, 4536 (2011).
  40. J. K. Sahota, N. Gupta, and D. Dhawan, Fiber Bragg grating sensors for monitoring of physical parameters: A comprehensive review, Opt. Eng. 59, 060901 (2020).
  41. E. Vorathin, Z. Hafizi, N. Ismail, and M. Loman, Review of high sensitivity fibre-optic pressure sensors for low pressure sensing, Opt. Laser Technol. 121, 105841 (2020).
  42. M. F. Domingues, C. A. Rodriguez, J. Martins, C. Tavares, C. Marques, N. Alberto, P. André, and P. Antunes, Cost-effective optical fiber pressure sensor based on intrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric micro-cavities, Opt. Fiber Technol. 42, 56 (2018).
  43. S.-E. Zhu, M. Krishna Ghatkesar, C. Zhang, and G. Janssen, Graphene based piezoresistive pressure sensor, Appl. Phys. Lett. 102, 161904 (2013).
  44. Q. Wang, W. Hong, and L. Dong, Graphene microdrums on a freestanding perforated thin membrane for high sensitivity MEMS pressure sensors, Nanoscale 8, 7663 (2016).
  45. Y. Javed, M. Mansoor, and I. A. Shah, A review of principles of MEMS pressure sensing with its aerospace applications, Sensor Review 39, 652 (2019).
  46. H. Lin, F. Liu, H. Guo, A. Zhou, and Y. Dai, Ultra-highly sensitive gas pressure sensor based on dual side-hole fiber interferometers with Vernier effect, Opt. Express 26, 28763 (2018).
  47. M. Šiškins et al., Sensitive capacitive pressure sensors based on graphene membrane arrays, Microsyst. Nanoeng. 6, 102 (2020).
  48. M. Chen, W. Luo, Z. Xu, X. Zhang, B. Xie, G. Wang, and M. Han, An ultrahigh resolution pressure sensor based on percolative metal nanoparticle arrays, Nat. Commun. 10, 4024 (2019).
  49. V. S. R. Jampani, R. H. Volpe, K. Reguengo de Sousa, J. Ferreira Machado, C. M. Yakacki, and J. P. F. Lagerwall, Liquid crystal elastomer shell actuators with negative order parameter, Sci. Adv. 5, eaaw2476 (2019).
  50. M. Aspelmeyer, T. J. Kippenberg, and F. Marquardt, Cavity optomechanics, Rev. Mod. Phys. 86, 1391 (2014).
  51. K. H. Kim, G. Bahl, W. Lee, J. Liu, M. Tomes, X. Fan, and T. Carmon, Cavity optomechanics on a microfluidic resonator with water and viscous liquids, Light Sci. Appl. 2, e110 (2013).
  52. M. Asano, Y. Takeuchi, W. Chen, Ş. K. Özdemir, R. Ikuta, N. Imoto, L. Yang, and T. Yamamoto, Observation of optomechanical coupling in a microbottle resonator, Laser Photonics Rev. 10, 603 (2016).
  53. J. Li, H. Schüring, and R. Stannarius, Gas permeation through ultrathin liquid films, Langmuir 18, 112 (2002).
  54. R. Stannarius and C. Cramer, Surface tension measurements in freely suspended bubbles of thermotropic smectic liquid crystals, Liq. Cryst. 23, 371 (1997).
  55. J. B. Prieto, F. L. Arbeloa, V. M. Martínez, T. A. López, and I. L. Arbeloa, Photophysical properties of the pyrromethene 597 dye: Solvent effect, J. Phys. Chem. A 108, 5503 (2004).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. X 14, 011002– Published 5 January, 2024
  • Received 1 August 2023
  • Revised 30 October 2023
  • Accepted 8 November 2023
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation