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Defy the common belief that oil drips!

Thickening smooth-textured oil for increased usability

The 26th IFSCC Congress 2010, Buenos Aires Congress Award (Poster Award)

A Novel Self-Assembled Structure for Transparent, Reversibly Deformable Oil Gels and Its Application to Cosmetics

Diploma

What’s possible with the technology?

This oil does not drip from your hand! Pioneer methods to thicken smooth oil!

Have you had the experience of cleansing oil dripping through your fingers before you even applied it? Products with oil as their main component, like cleansing oil and beauty oil, usually have a smooth texture, so the oil spreads evenly on the skin. However, this smoothness has its negative sides, like dripping, as mentioned before, and the trouble of cleaning up the spilled oil. This award-winning research is a development in the technology to thicken the oil so that it does not drip.

Although previous technology could thicken water, technology to make oil thicker was revolutionary. Even if oil is thickened, it must spread smoothly when applied on the skin. To achieve both, oil was generally processed by solidifying with wax. This award-winning technology is the first to achieve these features. Application of this technology in products will eliminate any concerns about dripping oil.

How is oil thickened?

A special polymer creates a network that limits the movement of smooth oil. When applied to the skin, the network breaks, and the oil is smooth again!

Thickness of texture is desired when handling oil on the palm of the hand. But if the oil remains thick and heavy on the skin, the product is difficult to use. The key point of this technology is that the texture returns to its original form. This is possible because of the triblock copolymer. Polymers are substances made of small molecules joined together to form mesh- or chain-like structures. The polymer developed in this research has oil-soluble structures on both sides of a water-soluble one. The water-soluble part in the center is attracted to a small amount of water, resulting in individual polymers joining together, and the joined polymers forming a mesh-like network. This network limits the movement of oil, so smooth oil becomes thick. The texture of the oil remains thick on the hand because of the network, but when mixed or spread onto the skin, the network breaks and returns to the original smooth state.

This technology is used in Revital Granas Cream Condense. This cream involves the mixing of the first and second agents on the palm of the hand immediately before use to make a condensed cream from high concentration oil and beauty essence. Drip-free usability is realized when mixing the agents on the palm. Applied research for this award-winning technology is going on. The age of drip-free, smoothly spreading cleansing oil is at hand!

Triblock copolymer

 

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