Spreading of trisiloxanes over thin aqueous layers

Surfactants are widely spread in nature and are increasingly used in industry as wetting, cleaning and disinfecting agents. Recently, there are newly discovered trisiloxane and other silicone based surfactants which show very unusual spreading behaviour. Although a number of experimental and theoretical investigations have been carried out, the underlying spreading mechanism remains unclear. Experiments using trisiloxanes and comparison with 3 different ethylene glycol monododecyl ethers (C12E4, C12E5, and C12E6) surfactants were performed to understand the influence of Marangoni force as the driving force for the spreading. We then compared our experimental results to available theoretical prediction in the literature. The obtained experimental data showed the opposite trend as compared with the theoretical predictions developed for a regular surfactants. The latter is assumed to be a special feature of “suprspreaders”.