[Cosmetic Ingredient] Carbomer
In this blog posting, we introduce our cosmetic ingredient product, Carbomer, which is widely used as a thickener for various cosmetic formulations. Carbomer is polyacrylic acid (poly(acrylic acid, PAA), synthetic polymer of acrylic acid with high-molecular weight. This thickener Carbomer is often called as Carbopol in the market, which is trade name of carbomer product from the most famous supplier in the world. Carbomer is white powder type polymer, and when it is dispersed in water, it turns into a transparent gel phase with slight viscosity. In this swelling phase, when alkali (base) agent (like TEA, KOH, NaOH, Tromethamine, etc.) is added into the phase, carboxyl group is neutralized to be ionized phase. This anionized polymer chain will spread to form polymer networks and this will make the water phase…