Will new types of hair color soon be seen in salons? Photo: © Zinkevych/Istock.com
Professor Jiaxing Huang and his team of researchers at Northwestern University (Illinois) recently published a report [1] suggesting that a material called graphene could double up as a hair dye, offering a safer alternative to the current chemical options on the market. What’s more, the material contains anti-static and anti-bacterial properties, meaning Graphene users might not have to wash their hair so often.
Graphene and graphene oxide
According to the report, which has been published in the journal Chem, Graphene can be used to darken light coloured hair via an application process that involves spraying, brushing and then drying the hair. According to the researchers, who tested graphene oxide (GO) and its reduced form r-GO, the material can be used to create water-based formulations to form smooth and continuous coatings on hair. The ‘dye’ typically lasted around 30 washes in tests, with the report concluding that it could even be suitable for creating ‘ombre’ styles.
“Graphene not only avoids the use of toxic, small molecular ingredients in common hair dyes but also renders new properties of hair for enhanced comfort, such as greatly improved antistatic performance and heat dissipation,” explain the researchers.
Innovation eager category
Despite the great interest of this discovery, graphene hair-dyes are still far from entering the next-door hair salon. But natural and mild haircare solutions are becoming increasingly mainstream — as illustrated last December, when cosmetics giant L’Oreal announced the launch of its first-ever vegan and plant-based hair color line, "Botanea."
Actually, this new process is already making headlines in the mainstream press, a sign of consumers’ greed for innovative solutions in this sector!
