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Mica pearlizer in Shampoo
Hello everyone.
Does anyone have experience in stabilizing mica in shampoo products in order to prevent sedimentation after several days? Are there several raw materials that I should consider ? Consider a simple shampoo formula without the use of salt and a viscocity of 3500 Brookfield. Thank you in advance. -
21 Replies
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you need to include a surfactant-tolerant polymer to suspend particles in a product like this - in my experience, Carbopol Aqua SF-2 and Aculyn Excel do the job very well
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^^ what Bill said - I recommend you try them both without mica first, to see if the sensorials are acceptable.
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Check Dettol shower gel, they have suspended polyethylene terephthalate using Aqua SF2. Works well and stay suspended.
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Far easier to use a glycol ester pearlising agent.
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Carbopol aqua sf-2 requires vacuum during production?The production line does not have vacuum
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No vacuum, bubbles inevitably get trapped. I tried this about 3 years ago. I still have the mica colours sitting on the shelf and some decomposing sf-2
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Agreed on that persistent aeration, rather go by john’s suggestion. If you have hot process, EGDS & cocomonoethanolamide gives a very beautiful pearlizing effect. Around 1.5% of each approximately.
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If I increase the viscocity will this cause a buoyancy effect on the mica particles?Unfortunately the pearliser has to be mica otherwise I would have used distearates. Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions.
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If I increase the viscocity will this cause a buoyancy effect on the mica particles?
Don’t bother wasting your time. The short answer is, NO. -
Gravity will always be in action whether you increase buoyancy or not. Even the addition of polymers and thickeners only delays the fall to the bottom. In absence of a suitable polymer it would be comparatively faster. There are certain Aculyns from Dow, aeration will be much less compared to Aqua SF2 but the final pH adjustment is little on a higher side comparatively.
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Unfortunately the pearliser has to be mica otherwise I would have used distearates.
Why?
I can never understand why people make life so difficult for themselves.
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the aeration depends on the level of polymer used - when neutralised and back acid thickened, both polymers I mentioned are effective suspension agents at very low levels
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buoyancy is related to density - not to viscosity
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Most of the Suppliers such as Cognis have very good surfactant based pearling agents that work very well using small amounts. Possibly one of the smaller suppliers like Lotioncraft sell one of them. I think that is a better option over mica.
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Check with the thickener manufacturers. The key to suspending particles is to increase the yield value, not the viscosity. (the viscosity may rise anyway, but this is incidental).
The other thing that may help is using mica that has the highest possible aspect ratio.
But…remember that gravity always wins. Pretty much the best you can hope for is a two year shelf life before the mica starts to sink to the bottom .
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I used Carbopol EDT 2020 for this. https://www.lubrizol.com/en/Personal-Care/Products/Product-Finder/Products-Data/Carbopol-ETD-2020-polymer
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Happy new year for cosmetic people! Perry, May I ask how much carbopol 2020 do you recommend as starting point?
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There is a sample formulation offered on the data sheet given by Perry.
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Thanks john, the site has a welcome with a banner that asks for the prefered language and then get frozen.
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Using carbopol like Ultrez 20 is best suspending agent for Mica particles. Specific gravity of Mica particles is also playing imp. role here.
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