A Technology for Glyoxylic Acid Treatment with a Hair Iron

Abstract

For many people suffering from frizzy hair, hair straightening technologies based on reduction and oxidation reactions using thioglycolic acid and hydrogen peroxide play an important role in solving their problems. However, it is known that there is more or less hair damage caused by oxidation after reduction and heat treatment. Over the past decade, a number of new frizzy hair control technologies have been developed to replace the hair straightening technologies. These have even led to the birth of a new category of “acid/heat treatments” which utilizes the heat of a hair iron and specific acids as functional ingredients. Among these, technologies using α-keto acids, especially glyoxylic acid (GA), have been highly evaluated in the market. However, there are few reports on the mechanism of action of GA, and there is no information on the type of cross-links produced, their position in the microstructure, the amount of cross-linking, or even the change in the hair structure. In this report, we present the mechanism of frizzy hair suppression as considered from the characteristic morphological changes and stress-strain properties of hair obtained by GA/heat treatment.