Recipient Organization
Applechem Inc
76 brown circle
Newark,NJ 07102
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Natural plant-based oils are under-utilized in cosmetic industry because there is no adequate technology for thickening them to exhibiting the elegant skin sensory properties that are expected in the industry. The purpose of this study is to develop a special thickening technology for the plant-based oils so that the thickened oils would have elegant skin sensory properties, thereby enhancing their appeal, commercial value, and acceptance to the cosmetic industry.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The objective of phase 1 is to demonstrate the-proof-of-principle for the proposed micro-gel technology approaches that would gel natural oils to having both a shear-thinning rheology and excellent skin sensory properties. Specific technical objectives are: 1) Develop preliminary prototypes of castor-oil-based micro-gel precursor and validate that this precursor can thicken selected natural oils such as jojoba oil; and 2) Identify the Kraton polymers that generate bulk-gels of selected natural oils and demonstrate that these bulk gels can be converted further to the desired micro-gels.
Project Methods
We take a very unique micro-gel technology for thickening natural oils to desired rheology and sensory properties. These micro-gels are very soft particles of lightly cross-linked polymers that are swollen in natural oils up to 50 u in diameter. We take two innovative approaches to produce the micro-gels: 1) Chemically-cross-linked micro-gels that are produced from chemical reaction between castor-oil derivatives and vinyl-terminated polymers; and 2) Physically-cross-linked micro-gels that are produced from dissolving Kraton thermoplastic polymers in natural oils.