Conditioning and moisturising are still leading benefits for hair care products in the Asia Pacific region including Australia and New Zealand, and across the globe. As a result the two terms are still key benefits, claims and trends for shampoos and conditioners.1
Silicones and cationic polymers e.g. polyquats, guar gum are well known as very good conditioning agents for hair care. There are many types of silicones commonly used in hair care applications as a conditioning agent, in particular with dimethicone fluid which has been used in shampoos and conditioners for many decades with claims such as 2 in 1 shampoo, from several key multinational companies in the market.
Usually in a shampoo that contains dimethicone as a conditioning agent, it is used with a high molecular weight or high viscosity of dimethicone or polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) since the basic properties of polydimethyl siloxane, which is an excellent spreading agent, include providing unique sensory on softness, smoothness and feeling. Amodimethicone is a cationic silicone which contains the amino functional group on the inorganic backbone of a polydimethyl siloxane molecule which replaces the methyl functional group in the molecule of silicone that could provide more substantive conditioning benefits. Now amino silicone, particularly amodimethicone, is more popularly used in hair care applications, not only shampoo but conditioners (both rinse-off and leaveon) products.
Both dimethicone and amodimethicone are silicone oils which are not water soluble (hydrophobic) materials and during use of these materials in hair care products (shampoo & rinse-off conditioners) which are mainly in aqueous or water based systems, they need to be emulsified and stabilised with surfactants as the emulsifying agent to avoid the separation issue. Therefore, silicone emulsions are well-known by formulators for incorporation in the formulation rather than using silicone oils or fluids directly due to their ease of use and lack of need to be emulsified and stabilised during the process. This is more convenient and saves on costs for batch time (shorter) and manufacturing cost (energy and time saving) including productivity as well. Beside these advantages of using silicone emulsion in hair care applications, we found that the combination of dimethicone and amodimethicone in emulsion format could provide conditioning benefits greater than using separate silicone oils or fluids in the same formulation.
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