Constrained sessile drop as a new configuration to measure low surface tension in lung surfactant systems

Existing methodology for surface tension measurements based on drop shapes suffers from the shortcoming that it is not capable to function at very low surface tension if the liquid dispersion is opaque, such as therapeutic lung surfactants at clinically relevant concentrations. The novel configuration proposed here removes the two big restrictions, i.e., the film leakage problem that is encountered with such methods as the pulsating bubble surfactometer as well as the pendant drop arrangement, and the problem of the opaqueness of the liquid, as in the original captive bubble arrangement. A sharp knife edge is the key design feature in the constrained sessile drop that avoids film leakage at low surface tension. The use of the constrained sessile drop configuration in conjunction with axisymmetric drop shape analysis to measure surface tension allows complete automation of the setup. Dynamic studies with lung surfactant can be performed readily by changing the volume of a sessile drop, and thus the surface area, by means of a motor-driven syringe. To illustrate the validity of using this configuration, experiments were performed using an exogenous lung surfactant preparation, bovine lipid extract surfactant (BLES) at 5.0 mg/ml. A comparison of results obtained for BLES at low concentration between the constrained sessile drop and captive bubble arrangement shows excellent agreement between the two approaches. When the surface area of the BLES film (0.5 mg/ml) was compressed by about the same amount in both systems, the minimum surface tensions attained were identical within the 95% confidence limits.