In addition to its medical and hygienic effects, toothpaste should also ensure a pleasant sensation in the mouth during cleaning. Foam formation plays a key role for both purposes: it is important for the distribution and cleansing effect of the toothpaste and is generally perceived as pleasant – provided not too much foam is formed. So optimizing the foamability and consistency of the foam formed is an important step in the development of toothpaste recipes. Whereby the number of expensive and time-consuming test group studies can be reduced if foam formation is tested in advance using suitable measuring methods. Equally important for quality assurance during production are meaningful analyses.
As part of an assessment of methods, we carried out a series of measurements on three toothpaste formulations using suitable measuring methods in order to compare their foaming behavior objectively. These involved reproducibly foaming diluted samples with a software-controlled stirrer in order to subsequently quantify their foamability and foam structures. The results enabled a clear identification of the differences between the various recipes.
