Measurement of interfacial tension by a deformed drop retraction method

This paper describes a technique, which enable one to overcome several difficulties encountered in a conventional deformed drop retraction method. The technique consists of forming deformed drops by the disintegration of a polymer thread and measuring the shape evolution of the drop. It is found that the technique enables one to overcome the difficulties encountered in the conventional deformed drop retraction method. By the optical microscope observation, it was confirmed that the disintegrated drop maintains the axisymmetrical ellipsoidal shape during the retraction process and was parallel to the observation plane. The interfacial tension obtained by the technique was found to be lower than the data from the breaking thread method. This variation was discussed in terms of the interfacial contact time. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.