The development of silicone softeners has gone through four generations, each with its own unique characteristics.


The first generation of silicone softeners is represented by dimethyl silicone oil and hydroxyl-modified silicone oil. Its advantage is low cost, but it has obvious defects, such as poor washability and easy demulsification during use, which limits its application.


The second generation of products includes epoxy-modified silicone softeners and amino-modified silicone softeners. This generation of products is not hydrophilic and is still easy to demulsify. Among them, epoxy-modified ones focus on giving fabrics a dry feel, while amino-modified ones focus more on smoothness. However, amino-modified silicone oil has a yellowing problem, which affects the quality of the fabric to a certain extent.


The third generation is polyether-modified silicone softeners. Its outstanding features are good hydrophilicity and not easy to demulsify, but its disadvantage is that the feel is relatively poor and cannot meet the market demand for high requirements for fabric feel.


The fourth generation of products is linear block copolymer-modified silicone softeners. It combines many advantages such as good hydrophilicity, soft feel, low yellowing and not easy to demulsify, becoming the most ideal type of silicone softener at present and representing the development direction of silicone softener.