Dimethicone Crosspolymer ●
TL;DR. This ingredient is primarily a texture modifier and oil-phase thickener that gives slip, cushion, and a soft-focus feel. It can also help suspend pigments and reduce greasiness in creams, primers, and makeup.
What does Dimethicone Crosspolymer do in a cosmetic formula?
This ingredient is primarily a texture modifier and oil-phase thickener that gives slip, cushion, and a soft-focus feel. It can also help suspend pigments and reduce greasiness in creams, primers, and makeup.
Is Dimethicone Crosspolymer clean?
It has significant clean-standard friction because many frameworks screen out synthetic organosiloxane polymers, mainly due to persistence concerns rather than skin irritation. It is generally well tolerated on skin and is not a common sensitizer.
Is Dimethicone Crosspolymer sustainable?
This material is synthetically made from silicon-derived and fossil-derived inputs and is not readily biodegradable. Its crosslinked, high-molecular-weight form has low mobility, but it can persist in wastewater solids and sediment.
Is Dimethicone Crosspolymer COSMOS-approved?
It is not permitted under COSMOS natural or organic standards because synthetic organosiloxane polymers are outside the allowed ingredient set. From a Green Chemistry lens, its durable Si-O network gives useful performance but weak alignment on renewability and end-of-life biodegradation.
How does Dimethicone Crosspolymer work chemically?
The molecule is a three-dimensional polymer network with a siloxane backbone and a methyl-rich surface, which gives high slip, oil absorption, and optical blurring. It is typically supplied as a swollen gel in a carrier fluid and used in the oil phase, with performance driven more by dispersion quality and carrier compatibility than by formula pH.
Last updated 2026-05-13