The most common method to generate optic cavitation involves the focusing of short-pulsed lasers in a transparent liquid media. In this work, we review a novel method of optic cavitation that uses low power CW lasers incident in highly absorbing liquids. This novel method of cavitation is called thermocavitation. Light absorbed heats up the liquid beyond its boiling temperature (spinodal limit) in a time span of microseconds to milliseconds (depending on the optical intensity). Once the liquid is heated up to its spinodal limit (∼300 °C for pure water), the superheated water becomes unstable to random density fluctuations and an explosive phase transition to vapor takes place producing a fast-expanding vapor bubble. Eventually, the bubble collapses emitting a strong shock-wave. The bubble is always attached to the surface taking a semi-spherical shape, in contrast to that produced by pulsed lasers in transparent liquids, where the bubble is produced at the focal point. Using high speed video (10⁵ frames/s), we study the bubble’s dynamic behavior. Finally, we show that heat diffusion determines the water superheated volume and, therefore, the amplitude of the shock wave. A full experimental characterization of thermocavitation is described.

Syringe-based drug delivery has been the most common and efficient method for more than a century.¹ With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 10 billion vaccines have been administered worldwide. This number increases by at least an order of magnitude when other regularly administered vaccines are included. As a result, tens of billions of needles are produced and wasted each year. The disposal of needles requires special procedures to avoid punctures, yet accidental punctures occur among medical and cleaning staff, exposing them to highly contagious diseases such as hepatitis and human immunodeficiency virus.^2,3 In addition, needle phobia may prevent adequate treatment.⁴ To overcome these problems, needle-free injectors were developed in the 1970s,⁵ but several reasons prevented their massive use: the possibility of cross-contamination, their cost, the complexity of use, and the instability of the jet, which tends to break, causing bruising and even bleeding.^{6 – 8}

Optics InfoBase is the Optical Society's online library for flagship journals, partnered and copublished journals, and recent proceedings from OSA conferences.

A high-velocity fluid stream ejected from an orifice or nozzle is a common mechanism to produce liquid jets in inkjet printers or to produce sprays among other applications. In the present research, we show the generation of liquid jets of controllable direction produced within a sessile water droplet by thermocavitation. The jets are driven by an acoustic shock wave emitted by the collapse of a hemispherical vapor bubble at the liquid-solid/substrate interface. The generated shock wave is reflected at the liquid-air interface due to acoustic impedance mismatch generating multiple reflections inside the droplet. During each reflection, a force is exerted on the interface driving the jets. Depending on the position of the generation of the bubble within the droplet, the mechanical energy of the shock wave is focused on different regions at the liquid-air interface, ejecting cylindrical liquid jets at different angles. The ejected jet angle dependence is explained by a simple ray tracing model of the propagation of the acoustic shock wave inside the droplet.

In this work, a passively Q-switched erbium-doped ring laser using zinc nanoparticles as a saturable absorber is studied and experimentally demonstrated. To achieve this, a saturable absorber was developed through a selective incorporation of zinc nanoparticles onto the core of an optical fiber using a coherent light source of an infrared laser at 1550 nm, then the saturable absorber was inserted into a laser cavity. The laser has a threshold pump power of 57.7 mW at 980 nm, and a range of pulse-repetition rate from 12.3 to 43 kHz. The highest pulse energy of 2.6 nJ was obtained at a repetition rate of 43 kHz and an output wavelength of 1565.5 nm. In addition, the saturable absorber was morphologically characterized by using both scanning electron and atomic force microscopy showing a uniform distribution of nanoparticles deposited on the optical fiber core. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of a Q-switched fiber laser using Zn nanoparticles as a device of saturable absorption.