Regulating Bubble Nucleation via Gas Cavities on Superhydrophilic Surfaces

Existing interfacial modulation approaches predominantly rely on constructing micro/nanostructures to lower heterogeneous nucleation energy barriers, yet overlook the pivotal contribution of surface-trapped gas cavities, which restricts the achievement of stable, precisely tailored bubble generation and hinders the development of programmable nucleation control.

Herein, we fabricated a series of functional superhydrophilic surfaces with rationally designed microstructures via laser etching, which enable effective regulation of bubble nucleation behavior. Quantitative experiments establish a positive dependence of nucleation rate on surface roughness. Mechanistic characterizations and numerical simulations unambiguously demonstrate that trapped gas cavities confined within rough textures act as dominant preferential nucleation sites.