Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating General silicone microemulsion

  • silicone microemulsion

    Posted by chemist77 on September 25, 2014 at 10:18 am

    As naive as I may sound but I couldn’t really fathom the reason for 2 ethoxylated undecanols with 11 moles of PEG and 5 moles of PEG in a single product. The INCI description is Silicone quanternium-16 (and) undeceth-11 (and) butyloctanol (and) undeceth-5.

    Could anyone please explain the presence of 2 undeceths with different degree of ethoxylation????? 
    thanks
    chemist77 replied 9 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • nasrins

    Member
    September 25, 2014 at 3:43 pm

    ha?
    :-O

  • ozgirl

    Member
    September 25, 2014 at 6:38 pm

    The undeceth-11 and undeceth-5 are ethoxylated surfactants used to emulsify the silicones. They have different HLB values. The reason two undeceth surfactants are used is the same reason we use two different HLB emulsifers when making a cream or lotion.

    Here is an article that might be of interest.

    http://www.dowcorning.com/content/publishedlit/22-1746.pdf

    Hope this helps :)

  • chemist77

    Member
    September 25, 2014 at 10:16 pm

    @ ozgirl  thanks a lot to highlight a pretty basic point that I missed out, shoulda known from the name MICROEMULSION itself and to produce it you would need surfactants and to do it in the best possible way a combo of ethoxylated alcohols was chosen I suppose. 

    tnx again

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