CTK, the cosmetics platform company, has announced on the 3rd of February that a research paper on “CTK-TiTan5X”, an eco-friendly UV protection ingredient jointly developed with a research team led by Professor Nam Yun-seong (Editorial Member of The-K Beauty Science) in the Department of New Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, will be published in the “Chemical Engineering Journal (CEJ, IF=13.27)”, a world-renowned academic journal in the field of chemical engineering.
This research, in which the master's and doctoral integrated program of KAIST's Department of New Materials Science and Engineering participated as the main author, will be published in the March 2022 issue of the Journal of Chemical Engineering (CEJ) under the title of "Plastic-free silica-titania-polyphenol heterojunction hybrids for efficient UV-to-blue light blocking and suppressed photochemical reactivity.”
CTK-TiTan5X, created with the patented technology of CTK and KAIST described in the paper, is a titanium dioxide material coated with “tannin”, a natural extract contained abundantly in wine and green tea. It is an eco-friendly material that can reduce the problems with microplastics and the worry about active oxygen in inorganic sunscreen. Titanium dioxide coated with tannins helps to minimize the biological and chemical side effects caused by active oxygen that can be generated if the sunscreen acts as a photocatalyst when it meets ultraviolet (UV), water, and oxygen.
According to the experimental results, if the titanium dioxide surface is coated with “tannin” through the CTK-TiTan5X manufacturing technology, the production rate of active oxygen can be suppressed by more than 99% compared to uncoated titanium dioxide. In addition, it can expand the light absorption range of CTK-TiTan5X from ultraviolet to blue light and can also reduce cytotoxicity caused by active oxygen that can irritate the skin.
So far, many powdery cosmetic raw materials have been manufactured by method with polymeric compound coating, which causes concerns about microplastics. However, as the trend to ban microplastics has recently expanded in the global market, especially in the United States, Canada, and the European Union (EU), the domestic cosmetics industry is striving to make a breakthrough. In this sense, CTK's development of CTK-TiTan5X material is expected to serve as a good example of how domestic manufacturers should actively respond to global policy changes
