25 July 2002

Sonoluminescence: Bubble power

(Cover photo: Ken Suslick and Ken Kolbeck)

When a gas bubble in a liquid is excited by ultrasonic acoustic waves, it can
emit short flashes of light suggestive of extreme temperatures inside the bubble.
These flashes of light, known as 'sonoluminescence', occur as the bubble
implodes, or cavitates. Now Didenko and Suslick show that chemical reactions
occur during cavitation of a single, isolated bubble, and they go on to determine
the yield of photons, radicals and ions formed.

The energy efficiency of formation of photons, radicals and ions during single-bubble cavitation
YURI T. DIDENKO & KENNETH S. SUSLICK
Nature 418, 394–397 (2002); doi:10.1038/nature00895
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Sonoluminescence: Inside a micro-reactor
DETLEF LOHSE
Gas bubbles in a liquid can convert sound energy into light. Detailed measurements of a single bubble show that, in fact, most of the sound energy goes into chemical reactions taking place inside this 'micro-reactor'.
Nature 418, 381–383 (2002); doi:10.1038/418381b
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