Sunday, May 29, 2011

Learned and Lacquered: Nitrocellulose

If you don't want to read the whole post, scroll to the end for a few essential points (in bold).

About a week ago, I was on my way home from a doctor's trip with some new nail purchases (doctor trip in St. Louis = trip to Ulta), and I started reading the box on my bottle of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri, which I've finally gone back to after giving up the hope that Seche Vite will ever stop shrinking my polish. I looked up all the ingredients, and what I found was pretty interesting to me. I asked my Twitter peeps if they would also find such information interesting, and the resounding response was, "yes!" So, I decided to start a series about the more science-y (but interesting) parts of nail polish - why certain polishes act the way they do, what the ingredients are and what they're for, etc. Today, I planned to talk about some of the main ingredients in nail polish, but I started with nitrocellulose and found that there was a lot to say, so I decided to stick to that.

from GuideChem
Nitrocellulose is the primary film former in nail polish. It gives nail polish durability and allows it to dissolve quickly when a solvent is applied (a.k.a. your nail polish comes off faster - this explains why it takes longer for me to take off my polish when I use Seche Vite, because it doesn't have any), and dries to form a thin coating on the nail.

Nitrocellulose is found in pretty much any nail polish, including top coats and base coats - the only products I've found so far that didn't have nitrocellulose were Seche Vite and GOSH Fix Base Coat, which I found very interesting. (You can see my document with all my polish and treatment ingredients here.) If you remember, I wrote in my post on GOSH Holographic that I found it to work just as well over Seche Vite as over GOSH Fix Base Coat, and I suspect that the absence of nitrocellulose may make for a good base for holographic polishes. I also wonder if the absence of nitrocellulose in Seche Vite makes it shrink...I may try the GOSH base coat over polish to see if it does the same thing.

Here's a list of some other film formers found in nail polish: Cellulose, Cellulose Acetate/Cellulose Acetate Butyrate, Diethylhexyl Adipate, Ethyl Tosylamide, Hydrolyzed Collagen, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Nylon Fiber/Nylon, Phthalic Anhydride/Trimellitic Anhydride/Glycols Copolymer, Polyacrylic Acid, Polyethylene Terephthalate, Polyvinyl Butyral, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Sucrose Acetate Isobutyrate, Sucrose Benzoate, Tosylamide/Epoxy Resin, Tosylamide/Formaldehyde Resin

That's all for today! I'm not sure how often I'll be doing this series - probably about once a week. Here's your recap on nitrocellulose.
  • Nitrocellulose is the primary film former in most polishes.
  • It helps make your nail polish come off faster when you use remover without affecting wear.
  • The absence of nitrocellulose may make polishes a good base for holos.

24 comments:

  1. Great post! Very informative - the holo base coat thing especially.

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  2. I'm looking forward to the rest of your posts like this, I find stuff like this so interesting!

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  3. Fantastic post, very interesting, now I'm looking forward to Sundays!

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  4. Hey, I LOVE stuff like this! Thanks for the cool 'Nail Lecture series'!!!!

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  5. I love this kind of stuff its very interesting. Looking forward to more

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  6. This is very interesting! I'm also looking forward to more posts like this.

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  7. Love this post and can't wait for the others :D

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  8. I'm looking forward to the rest of this series! I like to know the science behind the beauty!

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  9. The secret science nerd in me shrieked with glee with I saw this. Such an awesome and interesting idea. Totally looking forward to the rest of this series!xx

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  10. I think it´s very interesting to learn about the eingredients of nail polish. By now I only know about other cosmetics. And I like chemistry :)

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  11. This is so cool zara! I am excited to learn even though I am TERRRIBLE at science!

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  12. I think it´s very interesting to learn about the eingredients of nail polish. By now I only know about other cosmetics. And I like chemistry :)

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  13. Hey, I LOVE stuff like this! Thanks for the cool 'Nail Lecture series'!!!!

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  14. Thanks! I hope to make everything easy to understand. :)

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  15. Me too! Before starting this, I knew basically nothing about the chemistry of nail polish, so I'll be learning along with you all. 

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  16. Haha, let that science nerd out! ;)

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  17. Thanks! I hope you enjoy it.

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  18. Thanks! I don't know if they'll always be on Sundays, but it's likely. :)

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  19. Yay, I'm glad it's not just me!

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  20. Thanks! I actually discovered that by accident...when I got my bottle of GOSH Holographic, I was so excited that I put it on over the polish I was already wearing (which had SV on top). :)

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