Respirable liquid marble for the cultivation of microorganisms

A liquid marble has a porous and superhydrophobic shell, which prevents the liquid core within the marble from making any contact with outside surfaces, but at the same time allows gases to transport freely across the shell. In this study we demonstrated the use of this unique property of liquid marbles to build respirable micro-biological reactors to cultivate microorganisms. Liquid marbles loaded with two kinds of microorganism cultures with different preference to oxygen were studied. Due to the presence of oxygen in the cultivation environment, significant differences in cell proliferation between the two microorganisms were observed within the liquid marbles. Furthermore, we found that this respirable bioreactor provides a more suitable environment for the growth of an aerobe than that in McCartney bottles with shaking incubation; cell concentration increased more rapidly in liquid marbles.

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► Hydrophobic liquid marble shell can only let gas and vapor to diffuse through, but not liquid.
► Free gas transport property of liquid marble is used to build “respirable micro bioreactors”.
► The respirable micro bioreactor enabled different growth rates of aerobic and anaerobic microorganisms in liquid marbles under ambient condition.
► This property of liquid marble has important implications in biological applications.