Wing Li, Clara Goh, Jennifer Amos, Susan Jordan, Alan Theis, Cal Davis – Dow Chemical Examined in this article is the maximising of the performance of shampoo with the appropriate matching of optimum silicone particle size and cationic polymer structure.


Cationic hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC) and silicone are widely used in conditioning shampoos for the purpose of providing the appropriate conditioning and thus imparting manageability and wellness to both wet and dry hair.
Understanding the interaction of different particle size silicone in combination with specific cationic HEC molecular weights would provide a good foundation for formulators to optimise their shampoo performance. In this study, two silicone emulsions with the same internal viscosity but different particle sizes, 0.5µ and 20µ, were tested with several cationic HEC polymers. Findings have shown the higher molecular weight cationic HEC polymer in combination with smaller particle size silicone of constant charge density deposits more silicone onto European virgin brown hair than that with lower molecular weight cationic HEC polymer.


The opposite trend was observed with the larger particle size silicone. This surprising effect might possibly be due to the competition of different deposition mechanisms existing during the shampooing process. Conditioning performance on different types of hair and hair surface analysis by Scanning Electron Microscope were employed to investigate further the deposition differences.


SOURCE FROM https://www.personalcaremagazine.com