Engineering microbubbles for precision medicine with ultrasound

Bubble acoustics has widespread use in medical technology and nanotechnology. The applications include in particular local drug delivery or local, well-controlled surface cleaning and promotion of efficient mixing on the microscale through acoustic streaming. Microbubbles and nanodroplets consisting of a low-boiling point liquid can be engineered and actuated by means of bulk and surface acoustic waves. These agents can also be decorated with a payload, which carries great potential for their use as drug delivery agents in the context of personalized medical therapy. Key to all these emerging applications is a precise acoustic control of the interaction of ultrasound with the bubbles and droplets. The challenge here is the combined microscopic length scales and ultrashort time scales associated with the mechanisms governing bubble formation and its activation processes, which we solve by high-resolution ultrafast microscopy, even down to the nanoseconds. Together with theoretical modeling and numerical simulations these experiments assist our in-depth fundamental understanding of bubble behavior and provides intriguing new prospects for innovative solutions in nanotechnology industry and in nanomedicine.