Viscolam® Rheology Modifiers are a wide family of products that are effective at imparting the adequate rheological behaviour to every formulation system.
Waterborne Acrylic Emulsions
Viscolam® Acrylic Emulsions are high molecular weight latices, colloidally suspended in water with appropriate surfactants.
Functionalizations and internal crosslinking easily allow us to thicken complex systems, to target very specific rheology profiles and reach peculiar properties, such as suspending power, transparency or efficiency in stabilizing complex surfactants systems.
Waterborne acrylic rheology modifiers are either Alkaly Swellable Emulsions (ASE) or Hydrophobically modified Alkaly Swellable Emulsion (HASE), either crosslinked or not (CASE, CHASE).
They are sensitive to pH variations and exhibit their rheological character at pH>7. At that conditions the polymer swells and build a network, by ionic and/or associative repulsion forces, that is the basis of viscosity. Due to their chemical structure they are generally not sensitive to the presence of salts.
Inverse Acrylic Emulsions
Viscolam Acrylic Inverse Emulsions are viscous latices composed of water-swollen hydrophilic polymer particles, colloidally suspended in a continuous oil phase with a very low polarity thanks to appropriate emulsifiers.
This process allows us to obtain very high molecular weight polymers with outstanding properties, that render them suitable for applications like creams and balms for Personal Care or screen printing pastes for Textile and Coating applications..
The oil phase varies according to the different needs as well as the surfactant system to meet the customers' needs and the most stringent regulations.
Viscolam Inverse Emulsion Polymers are ready to use products which work in a wide pH range and in presence of salts.
Waterborne Polyurethane Dispersions
Viscolam ® PU Rheology Modifiers are non ionic medium molecular weight polymers that are soluble in water due to their hydrophilic main backbone, thus ready to use.
They are widely use in waterborne formulation for the rheological behaviour to provide, non only in terms of viscosity but especially in terms of flow and levelling.
They may contain a co-solvent for helping the dispersion process, thus also increasing the ease to use and dispense, or be solvent-free dispersions.
Waterborne Polyurethane Dispersions are technically Hydrophobically-modified Ethoxylated Urethanes (HEUR) and impart high shear viscosity through the associative interaction of the hydrophobic final part of the polymer with hydrophobic elements within the formulation.