Hair Fibre Technologies: Electrostatic Charge

At Nanogen they are proud of the cutting edge science behind their fibre products but how exactly do achieve better results than competing brands such as Toppik? The technology is very intelligent with the natural keratin fibres binding to your hair using electrostatic charges. It’s rather a complex procedure to comprehend with but it is critical that the exact charge is produced for an effective result.

The Triboelectric Effect

When touched with a different substance every object becomes either positively charged or negatively charged. The kind of substance used ascertains whether it will be positive or negative and astonishingly similar substances may have distinct charges e.g. wood being somewhat negative but when in a paper form it’s positive.

So is Hair, Positive or Negative?

It’d be too simplistic to state that hair is either positively or negatively charged. Some sections of the shaft are positive but other areas are negative. You might already be aware of this, but the outside the shaft consists of small ‘plates’, the borders of which are negatively charged. Many hair product brand names have conditioners that include negative seeking (cationic) particles made to cling to these plate edges.

A negative or a positive fibre may bind to your own own strands as distinct parts of your hair have a different charge. The difference between differing brands of keratin fibres needs to be quantified by the magnitude or charge power, plus whether or not they are dipolar. Nanogen focuses on both of these issues.

Dipolar

The ability to produce a dipolar charge on the keratin so that one end is positive and also another negative is achieved by the patent pending coating that Nanogen uses. What this means is that regardless of where on the hair is fallen on by the hair fibre, it’s going to stick. This special coating means each and every time the fibres will stick whatever the charge of the strand.

If with other brands the fibre matches the charge of the shaft on contact it would bind flat parallel with the strand. Not so with a dipolar charged nanofibre as one end of it will always repel and stand perpendicular to the shaft making the hair much thicker.
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