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Finding scholarly, peer reviewed articles

Learn how to search for only scholarly and peer-reviewed journal articles.

Scholarly articles are written by researchers and intended for an audience of other researchers. Scholarly writers may assume that the reader already has some understanding of the topic and its vocabulary. Peer-reviewed articles are evaluated by other scholars or experts within the same field as the author before they are published, to help ensure the validity of the research being done. Learn more about the peer review process .

Many scholarly articles are peer-reviewed and vice versa, but this may not always be the case. In addition, an article can be from a peer-reviewed journal and not actually be peer reviewed. Components such as editorials, news items, and book reviews do not go through the same review process.

Many professors will require that you use only scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles in your research papers and assignments. To simplify the research process, you can limit your search to only see peer-reviewed articles in Library Search and many library databases.

Limiting to peer-reviewed articles in Library Search

In Library Search, you can refine your results to peer-reviewed articles by selecting two filters. Under “Availability,” choose “Peer-reviewed Journals.” Under “Resource Type,” choose “Articles.” If you plan to do multiple searches, be sure to click the lock icon that says “Remember all filters” underneath “Active Filters” at the top. This will ensure your results continue to show only peer-reviewed articles even if you try different keywords. Peer-reviewed articles will display a purple icon of a book with an eye over it under their title and citation information.

Filter options in Library Search. The "Peer-reviewed Journals" and "Articles" options have filled checkboxes next to their names, which indicates these options have been selected.

Limiting to peer-reviewed articles in databases

Many databases have an option to limit your search results to peer-reviewed articles. This will usually appear either in advanced search options or in a bank of filters in the search results screen.

Search options for a database hosted in EBSCO. Under the subheading “Limit your results,” a checkbox with the words “Peer Reviewed” above it is enclosed in a red square to indicate its position on the screen.

Checking the status of your article

If you need further confirmation of whether an article comes from a peer-reviewed journal, you can follow one of the procedures below.

Search for a journal title in the library’s Journals search list. Titles that are peer reviewed will have a small purple icon of an eye above an open book with the words “Peer-Reviewed” next to it.

A small purple icon of an eye above an open book, and the words "Peer-Reviewed" are enclosed in a red rectangle.

If you don’t find a journal in the Journals’ list as described above, you can consult the UlrichsWeb database . It includes information on journals that are not owned by the University, so you might want to check a journal title there before you make an Interlibrary Loan request. When you search for a journal title in this database, you will see a small black and white referee icon. This indicates that the journal is peer reviewed. You can also check the journal publisher's website. It should indicate whether articles go through a peer-review process on a page that contains instructions for authors.

In this entry for the "Journal of Social Work," there is a small black and white "referee" icon, which indicates that the journal is peer reviewed. The "referee" icon is enclosed in a red square.

Where to find peer reviewed articles for research

This is our ultimate guide to helping you get familiar with your research field and find peer reviewed articles in the Web of Science™. It forms part of our Research Smarter series. 

Finding relevant research and journal articles in your field is critical to a successful research project. Unfortunately, it can be one of the hardest, most time-consuming challenges for academics.

This blog outlines how you can leverage the Web of Science citation network to complete an in-depth, comprehensive search for literature. We share insights about how you can find a research paper and quickly assess its impact. We also explain how to create alerts to keep track of new papers in your field – whether you’re new to the topic or about to embark on a literature review.

• Choosing research databases for your search
• Where to find peer reviewed articles? Master the keyword search
• Filter your results and analyze for trends
• Explore the citation network
• Save your searches and set up alerts for new journal articles

1. Choosing research databases for your search

The myriad search engines, research databases and data repositories all differ in reliability, relevancy and organization of data. This can make it tricky to navigate and assess what’s best for your research at hand.

The Web of Science stands out the most powerful and trusted citation database. It helps you connect ideas and advance scientific research across all fields and disciplines. This is made possible with best-in-class publication and citation data for confident discovery and assessment of journal articles. The Web of Science is also publisher-neutral, carefully-curated by a team of expert editors and consists of 19 different research databases.

The Web of Science Core Collection™ is the single most authoritative source for how to find research articles, discover top authors , and relevant journals . It only includes journals that have met rigorous quality and impact criteria, and it captures billions of cited references from globally significant journals, books and proceedings ( check out its coverage ). Researchers and organizations use this research database regularly to track ideas across disciplines and time.

Explore the Web of Science Core Collection

We recommend spending time exploring the Core Collection specifically because its advanced citation network features are unparalleled. If you are looking to do an exhaustive search of a specific field, you might want to switch to one of the field-specific databases like MEDLINE and INSPEC. You can also select “All databases” from the drop-down box on the main search page. This will cover all research databases your institution subscribes to. IF you are still unsure about where to find scholarly journal articles, you can learn more in our Quick Reference Guide, here, or try it out today.

“We recommend spending time exploring the Core Collection specifically because its advanced citation network features are unparalleled.”

2. Where to find peer reviewed articles? Master the keyword search

A great deal of care and consideration is needed to find peer review articles for research. It starts with your keyword search.

Your chosen keywords or search phrases cannot be too inclusive or limiting. They also require constant iteration as you become more familiar with your research field. Watch this video on search tips to learn more:

It’s worth noting that a repeated keyword search in the same Web of Science database will retrieve almost identical results every time, save for newly-indexed research. Not all research databases do this. If you are conducting a literature review and require a reproducible keyword search, it is best to steer clear of certain databases. For example, a research database that lacks overall transparency or frequently changes its search algorithm may be detrimental to your research.

3. Filter your search results and analyze trends

Group, rank and analyze the research articles in your search results to optimize the relevancy and efficiency of your efforts. In the Web of Science, researchers can cut through the data in a number of creative ways. This will help you when you’re stuck wondering where to find peer reviewed articles, journals and authors. The filter and refine tools , as well as the Analyze Results feature, are all at your disposal for this.

“Group, rank and analyze the research papers in your search results to optimize the relevancy and efficiency of your efforts.”

Filter and Refine tools in the Web of Science

You can opt for basic filter and refine tools in the Web of Science. These include subject category, publication date and open access within your search results. You can also filter by highly-cited research and hot research papers. A hot paper is a journal article that has accumulated rapid and significant numbers of citations over a short period of time.

The Analyze Results tool does much of this and more. It provides an interactive visualization of your results by the most prolific author, institution and funding agency, for example. This, combined, will help you understand trends across your field.

4. Explore the citation network

Keyword searches are essentially an a priori view of the literature. Citation-based searching, on the other hand, leads to “systematic serendipity”. This term was used by Eugene Garfield, the founder of Web of Science. New scientific developments are linked to the global sphere of human knowledge through the citation network. The constantly evolving connections link ideas and lead to systematic serendipity, allowing for all sorts of surprising discoveries.

Exploring the citation network helps you to:

• Identify a seminal research paper in any field. Pay attention to the number of times a journal article is cited to achieve this.
• Track the advancement of research as it progresses over time by analyzing the research papers that cite the original source. This will also help you catch retractions and corrections to research.
• Track the evolution of a research paper backward in time by tracking the work that a particular journal article cites.
• View related references. A research paper may share citations with another piece of work (calculated from bibliographic coupling). That means it’s likely discussing a similar topic.

Visualizing the history discoveries in the citation network

The Web of Science Core Collection indexes every piece of content cover-to-cover. This creates a complete and certain view of more than 115 years of the highest-quality journal articles. The depth of coverage enables you to uncover the historical trail of a research paper in your field. By doing so, it helps you visualize how discoveries unfold through time. You can also learn where they might branch off into new areas of research.  Achieve this in your search by ordering your result set by date of publication.

As PhD student Rachel Ragnhild Carlson (Stanford University) recently wrote in a column for Nature: [1]

”As a PhD student, I’ve learnt to rely not just on my Web of Science research but on numerous conversations with seasoned experts. And I make sure that my reading includes literature from previous decades, which often doesn’t rise to the top of a web search. This practice is reinforced by mentors in my lab, who often find research gems by filtering explicitly for studies greater than ten years old.”

5. Save your search and set up alerts for new journal articles

Save time and keep abreast of new journal articles in your field by saving your searches and setting up email alerts . This means you can return to your search at any time. You can also stay up-to-date about a new research paper included in your search result. This will help you find an article more easily in the future. Head over to Web of Science to try it out today.

“Everyone should set up email alerts with keywords for PubMed, Web of Science, etc. Those keyword lists will evolve and be fine-tuned over time. However, it really helps to get an idea of recent publications.” Thorbjörn Sievert , PhD student, University of Jyväskylä

[1] Ragnhild Carlson, R. 2020 ‘How Trump’s embattled environment agency prepared me for a PhD’, Nature 579, 458

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Identifying Peer-Reviewed Journals

A “peer-reviewed” or “refereed” journal is one in which the articles it contains have been examined by people with credentials in the article’s field of study before it is published. A more formal definition is:

"A peer-reviewed journal is one that has submitted most of its published articles for review by experts who are not part of the editorial staff. The numbers and kinds of manuscripts sent for review, the number of reviewers, the reviewing procedures and the use made of the reviewers’ opinions may vary, and therefore each journal should publicly disclose its policies in the Instructions to Authors for the benefit of readers and potential authors. "  (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals , 2001)

The peer review process can take many forms. These are:

• Double Blind or Blind Peer Review : submitted manuscripts are sent outside of the journal’s publishing or sponsoring organization for review by external reviewers (usually two, sometimes as many as four). In Double Blind, neither the author nor the reviewers know each other’s identities, thus ensuring impartiality. 
• Editorial Board Peer Review : submitted manuscripts are reviewed by an internal board of editors and not solely by one editor. Author’s identity may be known or unknown to the reviewing editors.  
• Open Peer Review : submitted manuscripts are reviewed by experts, and both the experts and the author are aware of each other’s identity. Sometimes authors are encouraged to suggest possible reviewers.  

The editor of the journal receives the manuscripts with comments back from the expert reviewer(s) and forwards them to the author with a summary recommendation. There are generally four different types of recommendations: (1) publication as is; (2) needs revision to correct errors or answer certain questions; (3) does not fit the focus of the journal or (4) not suitable for publication. It is this scrutiny and review/revision that sets peer-reviewed journals apart from popular magazines that limit themselves to just “fact-checking.”

Clues to whether or not a particular journal is peer-reviewed:

• There is a description of the journal’s peer review process in its instructions to authors or manuscript submission guidelines.
• Notice of an independent editorial review board in the journal’s front matter. The academic or scholarly affiliation of each member of the board is listed.
• The journal is listed in Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory “refereed” section 

Filtering for peer-reviewed articles:

Many databases, such as Academic Search Premier, CINAHL, OR PsycINFO, allow you to filter, either before or after your search, to peer-reviewed journals.  Keep in mind that only certain types of articles are peer-reviewed:

For more information see:

• Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (formerly known as the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals )
• Instructions to Authors List (maintained by the University of Toledo Mulford Health Science Library)
• Definition of a Peer-Reviewed Journal
• Peer Reviewer Selection and Contact to Prevent Peer Review Manipulation by Authors

DeHart, W. B., Griffin, E., Sundaram, S., Wood, B. E., & Flynn, M. G. (2022). An Introduction to Reviewing Research Articles for Academic Journals . HCA healthcare journal of medicine, 3(6), 355–362. https://doi.org/10.36518/2689-0216.1325

Kelly, J., Sadeghieh, T., & Adeli, K. (2014). Peer Review in Scientific Publications: Benefits, Critiques, & A Survival Guide.   EJIFCC ,  25 (3), 227–243.

University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Peer Review: An Introduction: Where to Find Peer Reviewed Sources

• Why not just use Google or Wikipedia?
• Where to Find Peer Reviewed Sources
• Where to Get More Help

Need More Help?

Have more questions? Contact Scholarly Communication and Publishing at [email protected]   for more information and guidance.

Ask a Librarian

The Ask a Librarian service for general reference is available during all of the hours when the Main Library is open. Visit the  Ask a Librarian  page to chat with a librarian.

Why is it so hard to find Peer-Reviewed Sources?

It isn't hard to find peer-reviewed sources: you just need to know where to look!  If you start in the right place, you can usually find a relevant, peer-reviewed source for your research in as few clicks as a Google search, and you can even use many of the search techniques you use in Google and Wikipedia.

The easiest way to find a peer-reviewed article is by using one of the Library's numerous databases. All of the Library's databases are listed in the Online Journals and Databases index. The databases are divided by name and discipline.

Departmental libraries and library subject guides have created subject-focused lists of electronic and print research resources that are useful for their disciplines. You can search the library directory  for links to the departmental libraries at the University of Illinois Library, or search library websites by college  if you're not sure which departmental library serves your subject.

Peer-Reviewed Resources for Disciplinary Topics

There are numerous print and digital resources for specific disciplines, areas of study, and specialist fields.  To find research resources and databases for your area, consult the comprehensive directory of LibGuides , the websites of specialist libraries, and above all, contact a librarian for help !

Here are a few major databases for finding peer-reviewed research sources in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences:

• MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Proved access to citations from worldwide publications, including periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies. more... less... Alternate Access Link
• Web of Science (Core Collection) This link opens in a new window Web of Science indexes core journal articles, conference proceedings, data sets, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
• Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window A scholarly, multidisciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for over 10,000 publications, including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and others. Also includes full-text access to over 5,000 journals. Offers coverage of many areas of academic study including: archaeology, area studies, astronomy, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, ethnic & multicultural studies, food science & technology, general science, geography, geology, law, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, physics, psychology, religion & theology, women's studies, and other fields. more... less... Alternate Access Link
• IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window Provides full-text access to IEEE transactions, IEEE and IEE journals, magazines, and conference proceedings published since 1988, and all current IEEE standards; brings additional search and access features to IEEE/IEE digital library users. Browsable by books & e-books, conference publications, education and learning, journals and magazines, standards and by topic. Also provides links to IEEE standards, IEEE spectrum and other sites.
• Scopus This link opens in a new window Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database including peer-reviewed titles from international publishers, Open Access journals, conference proceedings, trade publications and quality web sources. Subject coverage includes: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology and Economics; Biological, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
• Business Source Ultimate This link opens in a new window Provides bibliographic and full text content, including indexing and abstracts for scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 and full text journal articles in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. The database full text content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more. more... less... Alternate Access Link
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What are Peer-Reviewed Journals?

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• What are Peer-reviewed Articles and How Do I Find Them? From Capella University Libraries

Introduction

Peer-reviewed journals (also called scholarly or refereed journals) are a key information source for your college papers and projects. They are written by scholars for scholars and are an reliable source for information on a topic or discipline. These journals can be found either in the library's online databases, or in the library's local holdings. This guide will help you identify whether a journal is peer-reviewed and show you tips on finding them.

What is Peer-Review?

Peer-review is a process where an article is verified by a group of scholars before it is published.

When an author submits an article to a peer-reviewed journal, the editor passes out the article to a group of scholars in the related field (the author's peers). They review the article, making sure that its sources are reliable, the information it presents is consistent with the research, etc. Only after they give the article their "okay" is it published.

The peer-review process makes sure that only quality research is published: research that will further the scholarly work in the field.

When you use articles from peer-reviewed journals, someone has already reviewed the article and said that it is reliable, so you don't have to take the steps to evaluate the author or his/her sources. The hard work is already done for you!

Identifying Peer-Review Journals

If you have the physical journal, you can look for the following features to identify if it is peer-reviewed.

Masthead (The first few pages) : includes information on the submission process, the editorial board, and maybe even a phrase stating that the journal is "peer-reviewed."

Publisher: Peer-reviewed journals are typically published by professional organizations or associations (like the American Chemical Society). They also may be affiliated with colleges/universities.

Graphics:  Typically there either won't be any images at all, or the few charts/graphs are only there to supplement the text information. They are usually in black and white.

Authors: The authors are listed at the beginning of the article, usually with information on their affiliated institutions, or contact information like email addresses.

Abstracts: At the beginning of the article the authors provide an extensive abstract detailing their research and any conclusions they were able to draw.

Terminology:  Since the articles are written by scholars for scholars, they use uncommon terminology specific to their field and typically do not define the words used.

Citations: At the end of each article is a list of citations/reference. These are provided for scholars to either double check their work, or to help scholars who are researching in the same general area.

Advertisements: Peer-reviewed journals rarely have advertisements. If they do the ads are for professional organizations or conferences, not for national products.

Identifying Articles from Databases

When you are looking at an article in an online database, identifying that it comes from a peer-reviewed journal can be more difficult. You do not have access to the physical journal to check areas like the masthead or advertisements, but you can use some of the same basic principles.

Points you may want to keep in mind when you are evaluating an article from a database:

• A lot of databases provide you with the option to limit your results to only those from peer-reviewed or refereed journals. Choosing this option means all of your results will be from those types of sources.  
• When possible, choose the PDF version of the article's full text. Since this is exactly as if you photocopied from the journal, you can get a better idea of its layout, graphics, advertisements, etc.  
• Even in an online database you still should be able to check for author information, abstracts, terminology, and citations.
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How to Review & Evaluate a Journal Publication

Last Updated: April 20, 2024 Fact Checked

Active Reading

Critical evaluation, final review.

This article was co-authored by Richard Perkins . Richard Perkins is a Writing Coach, Academic English Coordinator, and the Founder of PLC Learning Center. With over 24 years of education experience, he gives teachers tools to teach writing to students and works with elementary to university level students to become proficient, confident writers. Richard is a fellow at the National Writing Project. As a teacher leader and consultant at California State University Long Beach's Global Education Project, Mr. Perkins creates and presents teacher workshops that integrate the U.N.'s 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the K-12 curriculum. He holds a BA in Communications and TV from The University of Southern California and an MEd from California State University Dominguez Hills. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 149,949 times.

Whether you’re publishing a journal article review or completing one for a class, your critique should be fair, thorough, and constructive. Don't worry—this article will walk you through exactly how to review a journal article step-by-step. Keep reading for tips on how to analyze the article, assess how successful it is, and put your thoughts into words. 

• Familiarizing yourself with format and style guidelines is especially important if you haven’t published with that journal in the past. For example, a journal might require you to recommend an article for publication, meet a certain word count, or provide revisions that the authors should make.
• If you’re reviewing a journal article for a school assignment, familiarize yourself the guidelines your instructor provided.

• While giving the article a closer read, gauge whether and how well the article resolves its central problem. Ask yourself, “Is this investigation important, and does it uniquely contribute to its field?”
• At this stage, note any terminological inconsistencies, organizational problems, typos, and formatting issues.

• How well does the abstract summarize the article, the problem it addresses, its techniques, results, and significance? For example, you might find that an abstract describes a pharmaceutical study's topic and skips to results without discussing the experiment's methods with much detail.
• Does the introduction map out the article’s structure? Does it clearly lay out the groundwork? A good introduction gives you a clear idea of what to expect in the coming sections. It might state the problem and hypothesis, briefly describe the investigation's methods, then state whether the experiment proved or disproved the hypothesis.

• If necessary, spend some time perusing copies of the article’s sources so you can better understand the topic’s existing literature.
• A good literature review will say something like, "Smith and Jones, in their authoritative 2015 study, demonstrated that adult men and women responded favorably to the treatment. However, no research on the topic has examined the technique's effects and safety in children and adolescents, which is what we sought to explore in our current work."

• For example, you might observe that subjects in medical study didn’t accurately represent a diverse population.

• For example, you might find that tables list too much undigested data that the authors don’t adequately summarize within the text.

• For example, if you’re reviewing an art history article, decide whether it analyzes an artwork reasonably or simply leaps to conclusions. A reasonable analysis might argue, “The artist was a member of Rembrandt’s workshop, which is evident in the painting’s dramatic light and sensual texture.”

• Is the language clear and unambiguous, or does excessive jargon interfere with its ability to make an argument?
• Are there places that are too wordy? Can any ideas be stated in a simpler way?
• Are grammar, punctuation, and terminology correct?

• Your thesis and evidence should be constructive and thoughtful. Point out both strengths and weaknesses, and propose alternative solutions instead of focusing only on weaknesses.
• A good, constructive thesis would be, “The article demonstrates that the drug works better than a placebo in specific demographics, but future research that includes a more diverse subject sampling is necessary.”

• The introduction summarizes the article and states your thesis.
• The body provides specific examples from the text that support your thesis.
• The conclusion summarizes your review, restates your thesis, and offers suggestion for future research.

• Make sure your writing is clear, concise, and logical. If you mention that an article is too verbose, your own writing shouldn’t be full of unnecessarily complicated terms and sentences.
• If possible, have someone familiar with the topic read your draft and offer feedback.

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• ↑ https://www.science.org/content/article/how-review-paper
• ↑ https://www.uis.edu/learning-hub/writing-resources/handouts/learning-hub/how-to-review-a-journal-article
• ↑ https://library.queensu.ca/inforef/criticalreview.htm

About This Article

If you want to review a journal article, you’ll need to carefully read it through and come up with a thesis for your piece. Read the article once to get a general idea of what it says, then read it through again and make detailed notes. You should focus on things like whether the introduction gives a good overview of the topic, whether the writing is concise, and whether the results are presented clearly. When you write your review, present both strengths and weaknesses of the article so you’re giving a balanced assessment. Back up your points with examples in the main body of your review, which will make it more credible. You should also ensure your thesis about the article is clear by mentioning it in the introduction and restating it in the conclusion of your review. For tips on how to edit your review before publication, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Energy & Environmental Science

In-situ polymerization of solid-state polymer electrolytes for lithium metal batteries: a review.

The practical application of commercialized lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) currently faces challenges due to using liquid electrolytes (LEs), including limited energy density and insufficient safety performance. The combined application of solid-state polymer electrolytes (SPEs) and lithium metal anode (LMA) can address these challenges and has received extensive attention from researchers recently. There are various strategies for assembling SPEs into lithium metal batteries (LMBs), but the most promising application is the in-situ polymerization strategy. The in-situ polymerization strategy can achieve good interfacial contact between SPEs and electrodes, significantly reducing the interfacial resistance. This paper comprehensively reviews the latest in-situ polymerization strategies for polymer solid-state lithium metal batteries (PSSLMBs), including the polymer system's design, the polymerization strategy's innovation, and the characterization of the whole cell. We summarize the components of the in-situ polymerization system, such as monomers, initiators, lithium salts, and backbone materials, and focus on the methods to improve the ionic conductivity and further enhance the safety performance of SPEs, including strategies such as the addition of inorganic nanoparticles, inorganic-polymer hybridization, and the construction of artificial SEIs. The polymer solid-state lithium-metal batteries prepared by the in-situ polymerization strategy have good application prospects and potential to become the next generation of commercialized lithium batteries.

Article information

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S. Zou, Y. Yang, J. Wang, X. Zhou, X. Wan, M. Zhu and J. Liu, Energy Environ. Sci. , 2024, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D4EE00822G

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Physical Review X

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Smectic and Soap Bubble Optofluidic Lasers

Zala korenjak and matjaž humar, phys. rev. x 14 , 011002 – published 5 january 2024, see focus story: a soap bubble becomes a laser.

• Citing Articles (2)

Supplemental Material

• INTRODUCTION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Soap bubbles are simple, yet very unique and marvelous objects. They exhibit a number of interesting properties such as beautiful interference colors and the formation of minimal surfaces. Various optical phenomena have been studied in soap films and bubbles, but so far they have not been employed as optical cavities. Here we demonstrate that dye doped soap or smectic liquid crystal bubbles can support whispering gallery mode lasing, which is observed in the spectrum as hundreds of regularly spaced peaks, resembling a frequency comb. The lasing enabled the measurement of size changes as small as 10 nm in a millimeter-sized, ∼ 100 − nm -thick bubble. Bubble lasers were used as extremely sensitive electric field sensors with a smallest measurable electric field of 110     Vm − 1   Hz − 1 / 2 . They also enable the measurement of pressures up to a 100 bar with a resolution of 1.5 Pa, resulting in a dynamic range of almost 10 7 . By connecting the bubble to a reservoir of air, almost arbitrarily low pressure changes can be measured while maintaining an outstanding dynamic range. The demonstrated soap bubble lasers are a very unique type of microcavities which are one of the best electric field and pressure microsensors to date and could in the future also be employed to study thin films and cavity optomechanics.

• Received 1 August 2023
• Revised 30 October 2023
• Accepted 8 November 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.011002

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

• Research Areas
• Physical Systems

A Soap Bubble Becomes a Laser

Published 5 january 2024.

Using a soap bubble, researchers have created a laser that could act as a sensitive sensor for environmental parameters including atmospheric pressure.

See more in Physics

Authors & Affiliations

• 1 Condensed Matter Department, J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
• 2 Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Jadranska 19, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
• 3 CENN Nanocenter, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
• * [email protected]

Popular Summary

A soap bubble is a thin film composed of water and surfactants, which encloses air and forms a spherical shape. Soap bubbles exhibit many interesting properties such as beautiful interference colors and the formation of minimal surfaces. But one aspect that has not yet been explored is their potential ability to act as a type of optical cavity, circulating light that is trapped within. Here, we do just that and demonstrate for the first time that soap bubbles can be used as lasers.

In our experiments, we dope soap bubbles—attached to a tube or free floating in a container—with a fluorescent dye and pump them with an external laser. The generated light circulates in the wall of the bubble, which consequently works as a laser cavity. We also make bubbles from surfactantlike molecules without any water present. Such bubbles have a completely uniform thickness with an integer number of molecular layers. Most importantly, they are extremely stable and can in principle survive indefinitely. In both types of bubbles, we observe whispering gallery mode lasing as sharp peaks in the spectrum of the emitted light. Shifts in the lasing wavelengths reveal subtle changes in the bubble size as small as 10 nm. This incredible precision allows us to use the bubbles as one of the best pressure and electric field sensors.

Because of their unique properties, soap bubble lasers could in the future be used as tunable laser sources and extremely sensitive sensors.

Article Text

Vol. 14, Iss. 1 — January - March 2024

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A soap bubble formed at the end of a capillary. (a) Scheme of the experimental configuration. A dye doped soap bubble is inflated at the end of a horizontal capillary and illuminated by a laser from below. The soap film is composed of a layer of water, surfactant molecules, and fluorescent dye molecules. (b) A soap bubble in reflected light. Interference colors are visible. (c) Fluorescence image of a dye doped bubble.

Soap bubbles emitting laser light. (a) A soap bubble illuminated in the center (red cross) by a pump laser. The drawing shows the gain regions (red) which are formed at the positions where the laser beam (green) passes through the soap film. The WGMs circulating in any vertical plane (black lines) pass through the two gain regions and are therefore excited. (b) Another bubble but illuminated at its rim, which generates a bright ring of circulating light. The gain region in this case is in the shape of a vertical patch. WGMs circulating in a narrow band in a vertical plane experience the most gain and are therefore observed as a bright ring. (c) A typical emission spectrum when a bubble is pumped above the lasing threshold. (d) Lasing intensity summed over a 5-nm-wide spectrum range as the input laser pulse energy was increased shows a typical threshold behavior. The dashed lines are a guide to the eye. (e) Spectrum emitted by a soap bubble attached to the end of a capillary when the pulse energy of the pump laser is increased. At lower energies only fluorescence is observed, while at higher energies sharp peaks appear. (f) Slab waveguide modes for a soap film at the wavelength of 555 nm. The shaded area corresponds to the approximate thickness range of the bubbles used in the experiments. (g) Spectra of consecutive pump laser pulses. Displaying a smaller wavelength range reveals a shift of the modes toward longer wavelengths.

Free-floating bubbles. (a) Experimental setup for the free-floating soap bubbles. (b) A photograph of a larger floating soap bubble, which is illuminated by the pump laser, and emits laser light. (c) Spectrum from a ∼ 2 − cm -diameter free-floating bubble.

Smectic bubbles. (a) A smectic bubble in transmitted light. (b) Scheme of the molecular structure of the film. Drawn is an example of a three layer smectic film composed of ordered liquid crystal and dye molecules. (c) Same bubble under crossed polarizers. The typical bright cross is observed indicating uniform molecular orientation either parallel or perpendicular to the bubble surface. (d) Same bubble with an additional wave plate inserted between the polarizers. From the resulting colors it can be deduced that the molecules are oriented perpendicular to the surface, that is, in the bubble radial direction.

Lasing of smectic bubbles. (a) Image of a lasing smectic bubble. The cross indicates the pump laser beam position. (b) Effective refractive indices for different modes calculated for a slab waveguide at the wavelength of 610 nm. The shaded area corresponds to the approximate thickness range of the bubbles used in the experiments. The bulk refractive indices of TE and TM modes are different (dashed lines). (c) Frequency-comb-like spectrum of a lasing smectic bubble 1.75 mm in diameter.

Lasing of smectic islands. (a) Two smectic islands (indicated by the arrows) on a bubble. (b) Image of a lasing island observed as a red ring (white arrow) on the surface of the bubble (indicated by the red arrows). (c) Lasing spectra of two smectic islands of a different diameter d .

Measurement of smectic bubble size. (a) Lasing spectrum from a 1.75-mm smectic bubble in time. The color represents the intensity. The white line highlights the shifting of a single lasing mode in time due to the decreasing size of the bubble. (b) Change in the diameter of a bubble in time measured by following the lasing peaks in (a). The initial size was measured from the FSR. The bubble size was slowly decreasing due to air diffusion through the thin wall. Since the size measurement is very precise, the plot looks like a perfectly smooth line. (c) When the decrease in size is subtracted from the data, only an extremely small noise remains.

Electric field measurement with smectic bubble lasers. Shift of the lasing modes when an electric field is increased continuously to 30     V / mm and back to zero. The continuous decrease in the size due to diffusion was subtracted from the data.

Pressure measurement with smectic bubble lasers. (a) Change of the bubble size measured from the lasing spectrum as the pressure outside the bubble was increased by 400 Pa above the atmospheric pressure. The volume of the capillary in this experiment was 80     μ l and the initial volume of the bubble was 4.2     μ l , resulting in V c / V b + 1 ≈ 20 for this particular case. (b) The calculated pressure sensitivity of a 2-mm bubble as a function of total volume relative to the volume of the bubble ( V c / V b + 1 ). The dotted line would be for a bubble with zero surface tension. The red circle in all panels represents the maximum V c used in the experiments. (c) Critical additional volume relative to the volume of the bubble, at which the bubble becomes unstable. Above this additional volume the bubble collapses due to the Laplace pressure. (d) Maximum measurable positive and negative pressure. (e) The minimum measurable pressure change. (f) The dynamic range for positive pressure change, that is, the ratio between the highest and the lowest measurable pressure changes.

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