Experimental and numerical evidence of intensified non-linearity at the microscale: The lipid coated acoustic bubble

Abstract

A lipid coated bubble (LCB) oscillator is a very interesting non-smooth oscillator with many important applications ranging from industry and chemistry to medicine. However, due to the complex behavior of the coating intermixed with the nonlinear behavior of the bubble itself, the dynamics of the LCB are not well understood. In this work, lipid coated Definity® microbubbles (MBs) were sonicated with 25 MHz 30 cycle pulses with pressure amplitudes between 70 and 300 kPa. Here, we report higher order subharmonics in the scattered signals of single MBs at low-amplitude high-frequency ultrasound excitations. Experimental observations reveal the generation of period 2, period 3, and two different period 4 oscillations at low excitation amplitudes. Despite the reduced damping of the uncoated bubble system, such enhanced nonlinear oscillations have not been observed and cannot be theoretically explained for the uncoated bubble. To investigate the mechanism of the enhanced non-linearity, the bifurcation structure of the lipid coated MBs is studied for a wide range of MBs sizes and shell parameters. Consistent with the experimental results, we show that this unique oscillator can exhibit chaotic oscillations and higher order subharmonics at excitation amplitudes considerably below those predicted by the uncoated oscillator. Buckling or rupture of the shell and the dynamic variation of the shell elasticity cause the intensified non-linearity at low excitation pressure amplitudes. The simulated scattered pressure by single MBs is in good agreement with the experimental signals.