Dr Duncan Dockar - University of Edinburgh

Engineering bulk nanobubbles for enhanced water disinfection and quality        

Nanobubbles are an emerging branch of nanotechnology being employed in bacterial disinfection and wastewater treatment. They can also be used in high-precision microfluidic surface cleaning and targeted noninvasive cancer treatment and diagnosis. However, there are many fundamental unanswered questions surrounding nanobubbles, such as their cavitation dynamics (their response to ultrasonic acoustic waves) which are crucial to their disinfection capabilities, and the nature of their apparent experimentally-observed, long-term stability, currently a point of intense debate. Dr Dockar’s research will reveal the atomic-level phenomena surrounding the nanobubbles’ stability, disinfection mechanisms, and deployment in microfluidic engineering devices, using novel molecular and hybrid simulations.