The effect of surface active solutes on bubbles in an acoustic field

The interaction between gas bubbles and ultrasound in water leads to acoustic cavitation under specific experimental conditions. Acoustic cavitation has been used in a number of areas, these include therapeutic applications, contrast imaging, synthesis of nanomaterials, production of nanoemulsions, treatment of food materials, waste-water treatment, etc. In all these applications, a variety of chemical species are present and most of these chemicals are surface active in nature. There is limited literature available on the effect of surface active solutes on acoustic bubbles. The current review aims to provide a consolidated overview of the recent experimental investigations on the effect of surface active solutes on cavitation bubbles and the relevance of these studies to some applications, including sonochemistry.