Spreading of Bubbles after Contacting the Lower Side of an Aerophilic Slide Immersed in Water.

While the dynamics of complete wetting has been widely studied for liquids, the way a gas spreads on a solid is by far less known. We report here the events following the rise of a millimeter-size air bubble towards a textured material immersed in water and covered by a thin plastron of air. Bubbles contact the material either directly at the end of the rise, or after a few rebounds, which affects the initial shape of the bubble and the resulting dynamics of contact. Then, air spreads on the material, owing to surface tension and later buoyance, which tends to flatten further the bubble. The corresponding dynamics are shown to result from the inertial resistance of water, which explains how spreading bubbles reach centimeter sizes in typically 10 ms.