Silicone oil is a widely used conditioning agent in shampoos. Polysiloxanes with different polymerization degrees and chain structures are structurally stable and have strong conditioning, lipid-attached, moisturizing, smoothing and shining effects.
When shampooing, the surfactant will wash off the excess grease, which will cause dry scalp, dry hair easy to knot, not easy to comb, and easy to produce static. While the inert silicone oil is not easy to wash off, can form a film on the hair, play a good attached fat, lower stimulation, improve combing, anti-static, soft and smooth, shiny effect, compared with other grease has an irreplaceable role. Its high efficiency, good film-forming, and unparalleled cost-effective advantages in the formulation, making silicone oil shampoo as a cost-effective representative of each of our lives as an indispensable class of products.
Is silicone oil really as rumored to clog pores and cause hair loss?
In fact, high purity silicone oil, hardly absorbed by the skin! The U.S. Cosmetic Ingredient Review Committee (CIR) believes that silicone oil can be safely used in cosmetics with a limited value of 80% mass ratio in hair products and 24% mass ratio in other cosmetics. The hydrophobic film formed by silicone oil on the scalp is permeable, and due to the inertness of silicone oil, it is difficult to form an osmotic effect between cell membranes. During the shampooing process, most of the silicone oil is actually difficult to deposit on the hair scalp, and most of it is rinsed off and hardly deposited on the hair follicles or absorbed by the skin. The silicone oil deposited on the head is expressed as smoothness, softness, delicate touch and shine, and in this aspect of oiliness is part of the effect that is missing in ordinary silicone oil. We commonly used in shampoo size particle size silicone oil, generally are used ultra-high viscosity polydimethylsiloxane and polydimethylsiloxane alcohol, this molecular weight super silicone, is very difficult to be absorbed by the body. Even so, we touch the hair when there is no silicone oil brings obvious sense of oil, which is also a common problem of many silicone shampoos – smooth but still dry after washing, which is also a reason why we often add some moisturizing moisturizer in the formula.
Why do some shampoos make hair feel thick and flat after washing?
In fact, silicone oil is on the lighter side after washing, causing the problem of heavy hair, we may ignore some negative effects of cationic conditioning agents. For example, cationic guar gum can cause significant deposition effect after multiple washes, resulting in the problem of thick and flat hair, and many silicone shampoos are used to this raw material, it can be said that silicone oil has carried this “black pot” for many years. And few consumers care about this problem, in fact, in the line of formulators, we know very well, to overcome this problem, we generally use a small molecular weight of guar gum or other raw materials to improve the problem.
Instead of focusing on whether silicone oil can be used in shampoos or not, it seems that we should focus on the underlying causes of the various problems in the hair scalp.
Some studies have shown that the thickness of the human scalp is about 1.476mm, the thickness of the skin on the face is about 1.533mm, and the thickness of the skin on the nose is about 2.040mm, which means that the skin on the head is relatively thinner. In addition, the density of sebaceous glands on the scalp is about 144-192/cm2, while that on the forehead is about 52-79/cm2, which means that the density of oil production on the scalp is significantly higher. The scalp structure is divided into epidermis, dermis, and subcutaneous tissue, and contains important parts such as sebaceous gland cells, sweat gland cells, hair follicle cells, immune cells, melanocytes, nerve endings, and other tissue cells. In other words, once the scalp problems, there will be a variety of scalp hair problems concurrently, such as head oil, dandruff, itchy head, hair loss, hair is not black enough easy to yellow …… these problems are often not a single occurrence, is often a succession of several problems have broken out, then the root cause of these problems, it is There is only one reasonable explanation: the scalp microenvironment has been damaged.
What is the cause of a series of problems in the scalp hair? This brings us to our daily use of a class of shampoo – sulfate shampoo commonly used sulfates: sodium laureth sulfate (AES), ammonium laureth sulfate (AESA), sodium laureth sulfate (K12), ammonium laureth sulfate (K12A), and some of the less used zinc salts, phosphate salts, etc. These are basically synthetic table activities of petroleum-based origin, which are characterized by excellent foaming performance and high cleaning power.
The cell membrane is composed of about 50% phospholipid bilayers, about 42% sugars, and about 8% proteins. The phospholipid bilayer structure is an important channel for the exchange of substances between the cell and the intercellular matrix, and is an important part of maintaining a stable cell metabolism. The phospholipid bimolecule is equipped with lipophilic and hydrophilic structures, which means that the cell membrane has certain surface activity according to the principle of surfactant. As the outermost barrier of human cells, the destruction of cell membranes means cell death, and if there is extensive cell death, then skin problems are inevitable. It is not difficult to explain the important reason why the stronger the cleansing power, the more irritating to human skin. There are no experimental data to prove the destructive effect of AES, AESA, K12, K12A, etc. on skin or cell membranes, but according to the cleansing power data of these products, their destructive effect on cells is self-explanatory.
Back to today’s topic, the use of silicone oil in amino acid shampoos, what does this have to do with what was said above? First of all, to solve some problems of the scalp, we must start with epi-activation, and choosing a mild epi-activation is the basis for giving skin protection. Amino acid epi-activation as a natural source of epi-activation, not only green, and gentle to the skin, widely welcomed by consumers.
In recent years, amino acid shampoo has been growing year by year against the trend, becoming a rare dark horse, and various large and small brands are also competing to launch various amino acid epi-live-based shampoos, with countless popular explosive models. In the field of amino acid table live source, there are about 50 manufacturers engaged in the production of amino acid table live in 2018, with total shipments of about 500,000 tons (discounted by 30% liquid calculation), growing to about 200 as of 2020, and a new growth rate of 20% per year.
What are the advantages of amino acid table activity products as a class of products that are bursting at the seams, compared to traditional sulfate products?
- 1, amino acid table activity is different from the petroleum-based source of sulfate, it is a natural green source, biodegradable, environmentally friendly, sustainable, and the country has relevant policies to support the development of the industry chain.
- 2, gentle to the skin, especially to meet the demand for mildness of baby products.
In fact, when making amino acid shampoos, although amino acid epi-activation is gentle enough and skin-friendly, amino acid epi-activation is not weak in cleaning unsaturated fatty acids on the scalp. In other words, after using amino acid shampoo, the performance is very refreshing and does not hurt the scalp, which can easily cause the problem of oil return to the scalp. In the selection of the fat-attached agent, some non-silicone oil fat-attached agent that can be stable to match the amino acid shampoo is often some small molecular weight or clear water grease, although the fat-attached effect is good, but it is more difficult to stabilize or reduce viscosity or defoaming, increasing the difficulty of amino acid shampoo formula design. This will lead to amino acid shampoo in the attached lipid this piece there is some lack, many amino acid shampoo on the market the overall effect is still on the refreshing side, this you may want to buy to try the effect.
So, since the lipid-attached effect of ordinary oils is not good enough, can amino acid shampoos use silicone oil as a conditioning agent? The answer is yes, but there are certain restrictions as well. First of all, ordinary silicone oil, and other large molecule grease as difficult to be compatible, either is difficult to wash off, multiple washing will cause a very obvious deposition effect resulting in obvious head oil problems, then it is necessary to use some modified silicone oil.
The use of modified silicone fluids is subject to the following conditions.
- Having a certain degree of hydrophilicity, which is less likely to lead to problems of deposition in the case of repeated washing.
- molecular weight is not easy to be too large, otherwise either in the amino acid shampoo added some cleaning power of the table live, or poor compatibility is not easy to stabilize.
- Defoaming and viscosity reduction effect is weak, amino acid shampoo thickening and foaming is still difficult, if the defoaming and viscosity reduction effect is too obvious, it will lead to a substantial increase in the difficulty of formulation design.
Cationic modified quaternary ammonium silicone oil cationic modified quaternary ammonium silicone oil, is a hydrophilic modified, spliced with a cationic quaternary ammonium group, so that it and other cationic conditioning agents have good adhesion, conditioning, anti-static properties, compared to other cationic conditioning agents, cationic modified quaternary ammonium silicone oil has more excellent hydrophobic properties, can improve the rinse, wet hair, dry hair combability, is a more balanced class of conditioning agents.
Amino silicone oil emulsions Amino silicone oil emulsions are emulsions made by emulsifying high-viscosity amino silicone oil, and there are amino silicone oil emulsions with nonionic emulsifiers and amino silicone oil emulsions with cationic emulsifiers. The main reason why amino silicone oil emulsions can be dispersed and stabilized in table live is that after emulsification, the emulsification particle size of amino silicone oil emulsions is very small, generally less than 1μm, and their emulsification carriers have certain hydrophilic properties. Therefore, it can be uniformly and stably dispersed in the surface activity system. In the process of washing, amino silicone oil will break the emulsion out, because of its amino modification, with certain cationic characteristics, its adhesion efficiency and conditioning performance are significantly better than ordinary non-silicone grease, and can be repeatedly washed in the process of excess deposits by the surface activity washed off, so amino silicone oil applied in amino acid shampoo is also a class of excellent performance conditioning agent, is recommended.
Admittedly, in the amino acid shampoo, adding silicone raw materials, or a certain degree of difficulty, which requires full consideration of all aspects of the formula design, but can be sure of one thing: amino acid shampoo, can use silicon!
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