Thermodynamic Stability of Nanobubbles

The observed stability of nanobubbles contradicts the well-known result in classical nucleation theory, that the critical radius is both microscopic and thermodynamically unstable. Here nanoscopic stability is shown to be the combined result of two non-classical mechanisms. It is shown that the surface tension decreases with increasing supersaturation, and that this gives a nanoscopic critical radius. Whilst neither a free spherical bubble nor a hemispherical bubble mobile on an hydrophobic surface are stable, it is shown that an immobilized hemispherical bubble with a pinned contact rim is stable and that the total entropy is a maximum at the critical radius.