  Fabric softeners are widely used to make clothes soft and impart nice smell.
Household conditioners are water-based formulations consisting of quaternary
ammonium surfactants assembled in vesicles. On the other hand, formulations
used for textiles finishing are typically silicone oil emulsions. Here, these
technologies are combined in a novel industrial formulation which contains both
surfactant vesicles and silicone oil. In particular, we insert an
amino-modified silicone oil into a recently developed softener comprising
vesicles of an esterquat and guar polymers. Two strategies based on the use of
esterquat or guar gum as stabilizers for the silicone incorporation in the
fabric softener are proposed. Dynamic light scattering (DLS), cryogenic
transmission electron microscopy (cryoTEM), optical and fluorescent microscopy
are applied to study the stability and the insertion of the silicone oil into
the softener. It is shown that silicone oil is stabilized by the surfactant and
the guar gum in nano- or micro-metric droplets. The vesicles structure and
properties are not affected by the silicone oil while the formulation stability
is preserved. These findings suggest that the proposed route for adding
silicone oil into a topical conditioner is a promising route for multipurpose
fabric softener development.
