Emollients for cosmetic formulations: Towards relationships between physico-chemical properties and sensory perceptions

• Published in: Colloids and surfaces. A, Physicochemical and engineering aspects Vol. 536; pp. 156 - 164
• Main Authors: Chao, Christina, Génot, Célina, Rodriguez, Corinne, Magniez, Harmonie, Lacourt, Sandrine, Fievez, Aurélie, Len, Christophe, Pezron, Isabelle, Luart, Denis, van Hecke, Elisabeth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2018
• Subjects: Chemical and Process Engineering; Engineering Sciences; Environmental Engineering; Environmental Sciences; Hydrocarbons; Esters; Emolliency; Spreading; Silicone
• ISSN: 0927-7757; 1873-4359
• DOI: 10.1016/j.colsurfa.2017.07.025

Thirteen current commercial emollients from different chemical families (hydrocarbon, ester, ether, and silicone) were firstly characterized by eight physicochemical properties which were a-priori thought to be stronglyrelated to sensory perception. Those include usual properties as well as more original ones such as volatility,estimated by the evaporated mass fraction during a fixed duration, as well as the polar and dispersive components of the surface tension. Principal Component Analysis and Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering led to apartition of the emollients into groups that matched fairly well with the different chemical families. It alsohelped to highlight the main characteristics of each group. As expected, silicone had the lowest surface properties. Hydrocarbons showed the highest volatilities and the lowest viscosities. Esters mainly displayed thehighest surface properties, and within this group, diesters showed higher polar components than monoesters.Sensory evaluation was performed at the same time by a professional panel. The sensory attribute “Spontaneousspreading” was found to be larger for silicone and hydrocarbons than for esters and ether. From our set of data, asuitable correlation was obtained between the sensory attribute “Spontaneous spreading” and the calculatedspreading coefficient on Teflon® which combines surface tension with the cosine of contact angle.