"Where is the published data?" It is the first question formulators ask about TDA Logic, and the answer has been in print since 1941. Charge barriers between colloids (1941), the phospholipid vesicle (1965), the packing parameter (1976), surfactant saturation of bilayers (1983), the kinetic stability of nanoemulsions (2004 onward): every premise of TDA Logic already sits in the peer-reviewed record.
TDA Logic did not need a new paper. It needed the published ones assembled into a formulation logic that does what HLB never could. NanoBase™ is the electrostatically stabilized Architecture built on that logic, and every formula built on NanoBase™ is built on TDA Logic.
Below, every source is listed so you can check each one yourself.
HLB: a 1949 selection tool that reached its ceiling
HLB began in 1949 as a commercial selection system. William Griffin, a chemist at Atlas Powder Company, built it to match his company's emulsifiers to customers' oils, and published it as a classification scale derived from emulsion trials.
The industry adopted it commercially and has run on it for 75 years. It was never validated as a predictive theory. The scale carries no term for temperature, electrolyte, particle size or surface charge, and it was never designed to assign ingredients to domains.
Every premise of TDA Logic, already in print
Every premise TDA Logic stands on was published, peer reviewed and cited for decades before TDA Logic organized it:
None of these papers mentions TDA Logic, and none needs to. The packing parameter entered colloid science the same way in 1976: Israelachvili, Mitchell and Ninham organized established thermodynamics into a rule formulators could use, and their theory paper became one of the most cited in the field. TDA Logic does the same for nanoscale formulation, and every claim it makes can be checked against the sources listed at the end.
A logic has no performance data. Neither does HLB.
The second question follows the first: where is the performance data? For a logic, there is none to give, and there never was for HLB either.
No one asks for HLB's performance data. A formulator uses HLB to choose an emulsifier, then tests the emulsion they built. The number does not perform; the finished formula does. TDA Logic works the same way. It tells a formulator which domain each active belongs in, and what happens next is a property of the finished formula, measured by the brand that makes it.
Responsibility splits cleanly across three levels:
Every active goes where the literature puts it
TDA Logic is not a new law of physics. It organizes what colloid and phospholipid science has already published into a working formulation logic, and it is open to anyone who formulates.
Each domain has a well-documented loading environment, and every active goes to the one its solubility and partition behavior point to:
Sources for the loading environments: Bangham, Standish and Watkins (1965) for vesicles; Rosen and Kunjappu (2012) for micellar solubilization sites; McClements and Jafari (2018) for nanoemulsion oil cores. Example actives by INCI.
Actives with mixed character can share domains, and each is placed by its own solubility rather than by a single emulsifier number. Use levels for each domain follow the Architecture's load envelope.
No single architecture covers that whole polarity range. A micelle-only system has no aqueous compartment and limited oil capacity. A vesicle-only system carries little oil. A conventional emulsion offers one interface to every ingredient at once.
Stability by design: kinetic, as the literature defines it
The electrostatic wall is the primary barrier behind NanoBase™'s kinetic stability, the same stability mode that defines every nanoemulsion-class system in the published literature.
- Tadros, Izquierdo, Esquena and Solans (2004) established that nano-emulsions are kinetically stable systems, distinct from microemulsions, and framed them for personal care.
- Gupta, Eral, Hatton and Doyle (2016) showed that nanoemulsions can remain kinetically stable over long time scales.
- McClements and Jafari (2018) noted that nanoemulsions require energy input to form. NanoBase™ is built with controlled energy input, exactly as that literature requires.
- Ajayi (2024), writing on cosmetic nanoemulsions, treats thermodynamic and kinetic stability as independent axes: a high kinetic barrier holds a system even where thermodynamics would favor change.
Thermodynamics sets the destination. Kinetics decides whether a system ever arrives, and that is a design variable. The packing-parameter theory of Israelachvili, Mitchell and Ninham (1976) predicts the equilibrium aggregate a single amphiphile forms on its own. NanoBase™ is a multi-population system engineered to be held away from that equilibrium, a case the theory was never built to model.
The electrostatic wall, and the barriers that reinforce it
The electrostatic wall is the design principle of NanoBase™. Two supporting barriers reinforce it, and each of the three is a documented mechanism in colloid science.
- Electrostatic wall. The populations carry strong like charge, so approaching surfaces repel before they can merge. This is DLVO theory (Derjaguin and Landau 1941; Verwey and Overbeek 1948) applied as a design principle.
- Steric layer. An adsorbed polymer layer resists close approach through entropic repulsion, independent of and additive to the charge barrier (Napper 1983).
- Ripening trap. A sparingly soluble oil in the droplet phase suppresses Ostwald ripening, the slow growth of large droplets at the expense of small ones (Higuchi and Misra 1962).
Together they raise the energy cost of every route a dispersion takes toward separation: collision, fusion and molecular diffusion.
The surfactant question, answered by design
The sharpest question anyone can ask of a lecithin system that also carries surfactant comes from Lichtenberg's work. Surfactant molecules move through water into phospholipid bilayers, and past a saturation ratio they convert vesicles into mixed micelles (Lichtenberg, Robson and Dennis 1983).
That is molecular exchange, not droplet collision, so it is answered by how the Architecture is built:
- The micellar domain stands as its own population. It is not formed by dissolving the vesicles.
- Surfactant loading is designed to sit below the vesicle-saturation threshold that Lichtenberg's model defines, so the bilayers stay bilayers and the vesicular domain keeps its aqueous core.
The same threshold becomes a working rule for formulators, covered below.
Every lot is verified before release
The lab characterizes every lot of NanoBase™ before it ships:
- Multi-angle dynamic light scattering against a design target near 185 nm, read at several angles so the whole population is characterized, not a single average.
- pH recorded at release and again at 24 hours.
A tri-domain Architecture reads a broader, structured size distribution than a single-population system, because DLS reports its populations as one composite signal. That breadth is the expected signature of the design. DLS evidences the multi-population structure; direct imaging methods such as cryo-TEM resolve each population individually.
The design rationale and characterization targets are on public record in the lab's technical deposit on Zenodo.
Every formula built on NanoBase™ is a formula built on TDA Logic
A formula built on NanoBase™ inherits TDA Logic, because the domains are in place before the first active goes in. The formulator's job changes from choosing an emulsifier by number to matching each active to its domain.
That is why every active is a hero: each one lands in the environment the published literature says it needs, instead of competing with every other ingredient for one interface. And every formula is a hero, because it stands on the same engineered stability as the Architecture beneath it.
Each Architecture has a load envelope: limits for added oil, added surfactant, electrolyte and pH. Inside that envelope, the finished formula stays a tri-domain formula. Added surfactant counts against the same vesicle-saturation threshold described above, so it is the limit to respect most. The lab provides the envelope for each Architecture and reviews any formula that needs to go beyond it.
As with any cosmetic raw material, each brand substantiates the stability and claims of its own finished formula.
Why formulators are moving to TDA Logic
- Every premise is checkable. The sources are listed below, and they predate TDA Logic by decades.
- It accounts for what HLB never modeled: surface charge, particle size, Ostwald ripening and domain assignment.
- Every active is a hero. Each one goes to the domain the literature assigns it, instead of competing for one interface.
- The Architecture is ready. NanoBase™ puts the electrostatically stabilized domains in place, so a formulator builds on TDA Logic from the first gram.
- Responsibility is clear. The logic is checked against the literature, the Architecture is verified every lot, and each brand measures its own finished formula.
TDA Logic gives every active a domain.
References
- Griffin, W.C. (1949). Classification of surface-active agents by "HLB." J. Soc. Cosmet. Chem. 1, 311-326.
- Bangham, A.D., Standish, M.M. and Watkins, J.C. (1965). Diffusion of univalent ions across the lamellae of swollen phospholipids. J. Mol. Biol. 13, 238-252. doi
- Rosen, M.J. and Kunjappu, J.T. (2012). Surfactants and Interfacial Phenomena, 4th ed. Wiley.
- McClements, D.J. and Jafari, S.M. (2018). General aspects of nanoemulsions and their formulation. In Nanoemulsions: Formulation, Applications, and Characterization. Elsevier. doi
- Tadros, T., Izquierdo, P., Esquena, J. and Solans, C. (2004). Formation and stability of nano-emulsions. Adv. Colloid Interface Sci. 108-109, 303-318. doi
- Gupta, A., Eral, H.B., Hatton, T.A. and Doyle, P.S. (2016). Nanoemulsions: formation, properties and applications. Soft Matter 12, 2826. doi
- Ajayi (2024). Thermodynamic and kinetic stability of cosmetic nanoemulsions. IntechOpen. doi
- Israelachvili, J.N., Mitchell, D.J. and Ninham, B.W. (1976). Theory of self-assembly of hydrocarbon amphiphiles into micelles and bilayers. J. Chem. Soc. Faraday Trans. 2 72, 1525-1568. doi
- Derjaguin, B. and Landau, L. (1941). Acta Physicochim. URSS 14, 633-662.
- Verwey, E.J.W. and Overbeek, J.Th.G. (1948). Theory of the Stability of Lyophobic Colloids. Elsevier.
- Napper, D.H. (1983). Polymeric Stabilization of Colloidal Dispersions. Academic Press.
- Higuchi, W.I. and Misra, J. (1962). Physical degradation of emulsions via the molecular diffusion route and the possible prevention thereof. J. Pharm. Sci. 51, 459-466. doi
- Lichtenberg, D., Robson, R.J. and Dennis, E.A. (1983). Solubilization of phospholipids by detergents: structural and kinetic aspects. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 737, 285-304. doi
- Pensive Beauty® Nanoscience Labs. NanoBase™ technical record. Zenodo. zenodo.org/records/18616576
