A conductometric investigation of hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose/sodium dodecyl sulfate/nonionic surfactant systems

Abstract

Surfactant mixtures are very often used in various cosmetic and pharmaceutical products because they commonly act in synergism and provide more favorable properties than the single surfactants. At the same time, the 9 presence of polymers in mixtures of surfactants may lead to molecular interactions thereby affecting product stability and activity. For these reasons it is very important to determine the surfactant interactions influence on 1micellization and mixed micellization, as well as polymer-surfactants mixed micelles interactions. In this work we examined self-aggregation of nonionic surfactants, polysorbate 20 (Tween 20), polyoxyethylene octylphenyl ether (Triton X100) and polyoxyethylene-polyoxypropylene block copolymer (Pluronic F68) with ionic surfactant, sodium dodecylsulfate, in aqueous solution at 40ºC using conductometric titration method. It was found that concentration region for mixed micelle formation depends on nonionic surfactant characteristics and its concentration. Formation of surfactants mixed micelles in the presence of nonionic polymer, hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose, and their binding to polymer hydrophobic sites, were investigated too. Analysis of obtained results points to different kinds of interactions in investigated systems, which are crucial for their application. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. III 46010]

Keywords

• nonionic surfactants
• sodium dodecylsulfate
• mixed micelles
• surfactant/polymer interactions