Supercritical fluids transition between liquid and gas
phases
with
slight changes in temperature so they have an
ephemeral
appearance.
Unfortunately supercritical fluids only exist at high
pressure,
making them inaccessible in everyday life.
So how to make them more available?
Bubbles
can contain gas inside at very high pressure.
The
smaller
the bubble, the higher the pressure that it can contain.
So my idea is to make very small bubbles that contain
supercritical fluid. The bubbles would be made of
glass, formed
at a temperature when glass is liquid. The bubbles
would be
made in a high atmospheric pressure environment. A
suitable
gas
is injected into the glass to form the microbubbles.
The glass
microbubbles cool and solidify and are removed from
the high
atmospheric environment.
The microbubbles diameter would be chosen to
optimise the
strength and visibility; I'm guessing somewhere
between 10µm
and 1mm in diameter.
The internal pressure of the microbubbles would be
balanced
against the tensile strength of the glass. This is similar
to how
tempered glass has internal and external pressures
balanced to
make it stronger than if there were no pressure
difference.
The supercritical microbubbles could then be
(carefully)
embedded into a layer of clear resin (with the same
refractive
index as the glass).
The supercritical microbubbles layer would change
appearance
with temperature (analogous to liquid crystal
thermochromic
layers).
Could be used as a coating on windows, toys, cars,
bathroom
tiles, etc.
Another interesting use would be as tiny bubble
chambers,
which
could be used to see subatomic particles flying
through.