What is surfactant? What is its function?

We all know that we should use detergent to wash clothes when they are dirty and detergent to clean kitchen utensils. But do you know what they are made of? If you look at the ingredient descriptions on their packages, you will find the word "surfactant". That surfactant is also called interfacial surfactant. Can it significantly change the surface tension of liquid? What is surfactant? Let's talk slowly. There are hydrophilic and hydrophobic components in the molecule, which tend to concentrate on the interface between the liquid and another phase in the liquid, forming a thin molecular film and reducing the tension, thus wetting, emulsifying, dispersing or foaming. Surfactants are a large class of substances. According to statistics, there are more than 1000 kinds. In the future, new varieties will be developed, and more than 150 kinds are commonly used. They are closely related to our life.
Why do surfactants have such strong decontamination ability? The following experiment can well explain this problem. Add a drop of vegetable oil to a small bottle of water, cover the bottle, and then shake it vigorously. No, you will see that a drop of oil in the bottle turns into many finer oil beads, which are evenly dispersed in the water. Then, you put the bottle on the table and keep it still for a moment. Then you can observe that the small oil beads scattered in the water will gather again. Water or water, oil or oil. If you add a drop of vegetable oil to the bottle containing water and shake it with a small amount of washing powder, another result will appear. The oil drops in the bottle are dispersed and become a bottle of muddy liquid. Then you also put the bottle on the table and let it stand. However, the result of this standing is very different from the last one. No matter how long the time passes, the oil and water in the bottle are still together, and there is always a bottle of muddy liquid on the table. This small experiment embodies the principle of surfactant decontamination. It turns out that the surfactant sodium alkylbenzene sulfonate molecule in washing powder can be divided into two parts. One part is hydrophilic, which is alienated from oil; The other part is lipophilic, which is alienated from water. Specifically, the alkyl benzene end of the molecule is lipophilic and the sodium sulfonate end is hydrophilic.
Guangzhou Tianying Fine Chemical Co., Ltd., founded in June 2020, is a young and dynamic company, which is committed to the research, development, production, sales and service of mild surfactants and green environmental protection industrial emulsifiers. The company is mainly engaged in daily chemical washing products (such as betaine series, amine oxide series, alkanolamide series, thickener, succinate salt series and imidazoline series products) and synthetic lotion additives (such as emulsifier products of pure styrene acrylic series lotion such as a-102, co436, cosp-1), aqueous crosslinkers, wetting agents and film-forming additives.