Fig. 1: Ultrafast bubble capture on MA surface.

a The design of ultrafast bubble capture surface is inspired by the Salvinia leaves, which feature hundred-micron structures and show excellent bubble trapping efficiency. b A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the conical-structured surface. c Height map from a laser confocal microscope and structural characteristics of the microcones. d The bubble centroid H evolutions versus time t. The inserted images display capture behaviors when bubbles (D₀/L = 2.4, where D₀ is the initial diameter and L = 1 mm represents the distance between the two cones) released 2 cm from the test surfaces. e Capture time t_c with varying sizes of bubble from D₀/L = 1.6 to 3.5 on the MA and FH surfaces. The insert illustrates the initial bubble radius D₀ and the conical distance L. Error bands represent standard deviation calculated from 20 independent experiments, indicating larger uncertainty in t_c on the FH surface than that on the MA surface. t_c on MA surface ranges in 1.5 ms–1.6 ms with an average 1.5 ms ± 0.1 ms. On FH surface that ranges in 45.9 ms–103.8 ms with an average 76.8 ms ± 21.4 ms. f Dimensionless capture time t_c/t_min among the reported structural aerophilic surfaces with varied roughness ratio S_c/S_min. S_c is the maximum characteristic structural size on each surface and S_min = 0.1 μm is the minimum characteristic size among the all. Each long bar represents the range of capture time on the same surface. Each error bar shows the reported measurement error. Our work shows a record-setting minimal time t_min = 0.8 ms, a stable average t_c of 1.5 ms, and the time bars covering wide parameter ranges S_c/S_min = 3.4\(\times\)10³–1.8\(\times\)10⁴ and D₀/L = 1.6 to 3.5. Star labels (*) represent raw data that cannot be transformed to the capture time defined in this work. All the raw data are provided in Supplementary Table 1. A comparison of detection methods on capture time is summarized in Supplementary Table 2.