Dynamic interfacial tension effects in the rupture of liquid necks

By examining the rupture of fluid necks during droplet formation of surfactant-laden liquids, we observe deviations from expected behaviour for the pinch-off of such necks. We suggest that these deviations are due to the presence of a dynamic (time-varying) interfacial tension at the minimum neck location and extract this quantity from our measurements on a variety of systems. The presence of such dynamic interfacial tension effects should change the rupture process drastically. However, our measurements show that a simple ansatz, which incorporates the temporal change of the interfacial tension, allows us to understand the dynamics of thinning. This shows that this dynamics is largely independent of the exact details of what happens far from the breakup location, pointing to the local nature of the thinning dynamics.