# Hair care and scalp

Topic radar · 5,226 documents · 2021-01-01–2026-10-13 · updated 2026-10-18

Canonical: https://slate.greyb.com/radar/hair-care-and-scalp/innovations

## In one minute

### The dose is computed, not poured
The most complete device here decides how much to dispense rather than letting the user decide. Water-oil detection electrodes sit on the comb tooth contacts and read a voltage when they touch the scalp; the signal is amplified, rectified, filtered and converted to digital, then turned into a scalp water-oil value. From that value the device calculates consumption of each composition by its own ratio coefficient, and adjusts the output again for environmental factors and a liquid-output coefficient [1]. A later filing widens the input to pH, moisture, sebum, temperature, electrical conductivity and images, builds a scalp condition gradient profile and a health index from them, meters variable micro-doses through the bristle tips while a massage unit works selected bristles, and updates the profile with post-treatment readings in a closed loop [2]. L'Oréal's version detects contact, distance and locality and controls dispensing through individual tips from a cartridge [3]. Simpler devices do only the last step, stopping the pump when the teeth leave the scalp [4] [5].

The chain from electrode to millilitre is fully specified. What none of these filings specify is whether the millilitre it computes reaches the follicle.

1. [CN115316774A](/?paper=CN115316774A&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard)
2. [IN202611051076A](/?paper=IN202611051076A&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard)
3. [ES3053069T3](/?paper=ES3053069T3&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard)
4. [CN222425537U](/?paper=CN222425537U&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard)
5. [CN223143026U](/?paper=CN223143026U&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard)

### The market pays for measured claims, and the filings do not carry them
The scalp products drawing capital are sold on human trial data. KilgourMD raised a Series A on a clinical trial in menopausal women reporting 95% decreased shedding within six weeks, and OUAI's scalp serum is sold on a 16-week expert grading study. The formulations in the filings rest on in vitro Malassezia inhibition and applicant-reported panel numbers. The market's bar and the filings' evidence are not the same thing, and the market's bar is the higher one.


### The newest work is still composition, and it is still unproven
The filings arriving now look like the filings that came before them. A fermented Polygonum multiflorum essence paired with piroctone olamine, a ginsenoside-gingerol dispersion built for storage stability, a polypeptide aimed at the hair cortex and the follicle cycle. Each claims a mechanism and a benefit, and none carries a measured human outcome. The field's commitment is to more claims on the same unproven ground.


### Two mechanical problems get solved before any chemistry matters
The first is that hair is in the way. The filings answer it with tooth geometry: wavy or V-shaped teeth whose convex points contact the scalp and whose grooves gather hair aside, with the care structure offset from the groove so it acts on the exposed skin. One filing makes the teeth elastic and tapering, so they deform and widen on contact to separate hair roots rather than part around them.


### The instrument that reached market is the diagnostic
L'Oréal launched K-SCAN, an AI-powered scalp and hair assessment camera for professional use by hairdressers. IEVA sells HairDiag, a professional scalp and hair diagnostic device, and Becon sells an AI skin and scalp analysis device. MYAVANA raised a $5.9 million seed for AI-driven personalised hair care. The scalp massager category these sit beside was valued at 851.5 million in 2024 and is projected to reach 1.29 billion by 2030.


### Unilever is the one company whose commitment is legible across the record
Unilever's deposition line runs unbroken into this year. An acrylamidopropyltrimonium chloride copolymer composition published in July, a cationic guar ratio composition in June, a methyl glucamide and silicone composition in January. Same active, same mechanism, different offices and years. P&G's numerically specified polymer claims run alongside it. This is the one line where a named company's strategy is readable across the whole record rather than in a single filing.


### A comb where the device is the active
One filing removes the formulation from the device entirely. Self-polarised polyvinylidene fluoride is used as the active material, 3D-printed into brush wires or comb heads; mechanical bending during combing generates electrical signals and reactive oxygen and hydrogen radicals, which regulate the scalp microecology with no external power and no antimicrobial ingredient. It is the only line here where the hardware is the therapy rather than the delivery route, and it is a single filing.


### The category's growth is being built in Korea and Japan, and exported
Korea's hair care exports reached $232.62 million in the first five months of 2026, up 30.6% on the same period a year earlier, with the skinification of scalp care named as the driver. In Japan, Korean hair care sales on the Qoo10 marketplace rose 115% year on year in May, with functional treatments, serums and special scalp care products all growing more than 110%. AmorePacific has set hair care as a new growth pillar, targeting KRW 1 trillion in sales by 2030, and its venture arm joined a $7.46 million round for Refilled, a scalp care technology startup.


## Overview


The field has converged on a formulation race whose differentiating asset has moved off the molecule and onto the delivery system around it, and the evidence to support any of it has not moved at all.


## Research

### Deposition has become a designed parameter space
The anti-dandruff deposition filings no longer claim an ingredient. They claim a polymer specified numerically. P&G's compositions set molecular weight at 250,000–2,600,000 g/mol and charge density at 0.25–7.0 meq/g, subject to the inequality CD + 8×10⁻⁷×MW − 1.5 ≥ 0, and claim a deposition efficiency 1.4 to 3 times a control of 14% SLES with no polymer at pH 6. Unilever's version names an acrylamidopropyltrimonium chloride/acrylamide copolymer, charge density 0.1–2.5 meq/g and molecular weight under 1.5 million, and argues it beats cationic guar.


### The carrier is the join
Where the deposition work engineers a polymer, the composite work engineers a surface. Lignin-coated zinc oxide is made by suspending lignin in alkali, adding a zinc salt dropwise, setting pH to 9.0–12.0 and running a hydrothermal reaction under nitrogen, producing a raspberry-textured particle that adsorbs dirt by hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces. A second route adsorbs zinc oxide onto silicate platelets by dehydrating zinc hydroxide formed on the platelet surface, which improves aqueous dispersibility and antimicrobial and UV performance over zinc oxide alone. Chitosan is grafted to porous starch through periodate oxidation to an aldehyde intermediate, then reductive amination with sodium cyanoborohydride at pH 4.5–8.5, at a set mass ratio of 5:(0.2–2.0):(0.2–2.0). Vitamin E is grafted into kaolinite by first intercalating dimethyl sulfoxide and then displacing it under heat, reaching 30–88% intercalation and 1.0–1.11 nm interlayer spacing. Pomegranate polyphenols reduce zinc oxide onto nanoparticles with sodium borohydride.


### Release is triggered, not timed
The carriers that followed the review literature are built to release on a condition rather than a clock. An enzyme-responsive silk fibroin nanovesicle carries enzymatically cleavable ester bonds and stays stable until sebaceous esterases in the follicle microenvironment cleave it, producing a burst release at the target. A pH-responsive nanocapsule system monitors scalp pH and ionic strength in real time and regulates pore size to open release, with surface protrusions sized to the spacing and height of hair scales, and receptor-modified variants that read microbial metabolites through aptamers. Conjugated linoleic acid is made to serve as both the vesicle wall and the drug, with arginine on the surface. Hyaluronic-acid liposomes are chosen for CD44 receptor binding to carry peptides past scalp enzymes, and cationic lipids are added to liposomes to reduce aggregation by electrostatic repulsion and raise affinity for the negatively charged stratum corneum. One filing puts microRNA in a lipid vesicle built from phospholipids, non-esterified fatty acids, phytosphingosine, sphingomyelin and ceramide.


### The bioprocess is the product
A large share of the active-ingredient work protects a process, not a molecule. One filing deposits a Lactobacillus plantarum strain, CFS-401, selected for broad-spectrum activity against Malassezia and Staphylococcus epidermidis while promoting Cutibacterium acnes; another deposits a strain isolated from human scalp on the strength of its activity against S. epidermidis. A rice ferment filing deposits two strains by accession number and specifies a compound inoculum of Streptococcus thermophilus, Bifidobacterium breve and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum plus a Trichosporon species.


### The field patents its own test methods
The measurement layer is being engineered as deliberately as the products. One filing specifies a Malassezia furfur assay — culture at 29–31°C on malt extract agar with Tween 40, sterile saline with Tween 40 as diluent, suspension above 1×10⁶ cfu/mL — and states its purpose plainly: a cost-effective alternative to human efficacy tests for anti-dandruff products. Another replaces the Sebumeter probe with fluorescently labelled artificial grease on a pig-skin scalp model, measuring degreasing as the difference in fluorescence intensity before and after washing. LG Household & Health Care stains scalp biofilm and keratin with erythrosine and scores condition from how much red intensity survives a wash, with a 40% reduction as the threshold between needing care and not. P&G measures the antimicrobial peptide S100A12 from tape-stripped skin cells as an objective read on microbial defence.


### A line that stops
The selective androgen receptor degrader family runs from 2021 to 2024 and then stops. Four filings across the family claim heterocyclic compounds that bind the androgen receptor at the ligand-binding domain or the N-terminal domain and degrade both full-length receptor and splice variants, with androgenic alopecia named among the indications and topical administration proposed to avoid systemic exposure. Nothing in the family appears after 2024. For a mechanism that would enter the prescription channel, that silence is the most informative thing about it.


### The same chassis, a different species
Pet coat care here is not a separate technology. The Bulgarian filing is a human microbiome-friendly cleanser chassis with spores added: disodium cocoyl glutamate at 5.01–20%, sodium lauryl sarcosinate at 0.5–15%, probiotic spores at 10³–10⁹ CFU/mL, provitamin B5 and botanical conditioners. The Indonesian filing is a waterless powder of red betel leaf, bay leaf and coconut fibre at 1:1:1 with talc, zinc and magnesium, and it states its own reason for the format — kittens, puppies, pregnant or nursing animals, sick animals, and rainy-season use where wetting the coat is the problem. The plant blends are otherwise interchangeable and none is extended: a six-botanical dog shampoo aimed at seborrheic dermatitis and fungal infection, a kukui oil, urea and neem topical for Alopecia X in Pomeranians and Poodles, a Manuka composition spanning shampoo, rinse, conditioner and topical.


### What has not been built
The gap is not in the specifications. It is in the absence of an endpoint behind them. The trials that touch this area test mechanical cleansing of the scalp and light therapy on a scarring alopecia — not the delivery of an active by a device or a carrier. The sensing comb computes a dose and nothing reports whether that dose reaches the follicle; the carriers are designed to release on a trigger and nothing reports a clinical result for any of them. The independent literature has established that the follicular route is real and that particle size governs how deep a carrier goes, which makes the silence on the other side of the design more conspicuous, not less.


## Market

### The consolidation is at the brand level, not the technology level
Henkel agreed to acquire OLAPLEX for $1.4 billion in March 2026 and Not Your Mother's in the same month. The money is buying brands and distribution. It is not buying the deposition systems or carrier chemistries the filings protect.


### The category's size is not settled
Grand View Research puts the global hair and scalp care market at 88.2 billion in 2025, rising to 150.5 billion by 2033 at 7.0%. Market.us puts it at 104.1 billion in 2024, reaching 199.1 billion by 2034 at 6.7%. Emergen Research puts it at 110.59 billion in 2024, reaching 193.29 billion by 2034 at 5.8%. The base-year figures differ by about $22 billion, a quarter of the total. The direction is agreed; the number is not.


### The legal activity is about names and claims, not formulations
The Delhi High Court restrained a "SCALP SAYY" mark as deceptively similar to "SAYY", and the Bombay High Court restrained a competitor's Jasmine hair oil trade dress in Marico v Minolta. A Proposition 65 notice over diethanolamine in an herbal shampoo was filed and withdrawn. The disputes that reach the market are about names and marketing claims rather than the technology underneath them.


## Strategy

### The comb is becoming a treatment instrument
The device filings have moved past dispensing. The newest, published this month, puts low-frequency muscle stimulation, galvanic iontophoresis, infrared and red light, heat and a proximity sensor into one head. Another runs EMS microcurrent and a plasma generator on the same comb teeth. The direction is more modalities per device, and the formulation becomes one input among several.


### The newest kind of filing is the decision layer
A line has appeared that is not about a molecule or a device. LG H&H scores a subject's status against ingredient efficacy scores to select a product, and a separate filing derives hair-loss risk from genetic, body and questionnaire data. University filings build wearable systems that read the scalp and dispense a personalised mix. The bet is on the recommendation, and the bottle becomes the commodity it selects.


### The microbiome has become the shared vocabulary
The newest filings argue flora balance. A shampoo pairs probiotics, prebiotics and antimicrobial peptides to suppress Malassezia while repairing the barrier. A fermented Polygonum multiflorum filtrate claims a 285% Malassezia inhibition rate and a 220% rise in Corynebacterium. A rooibos, white tea tree and camellia ferment targets seborrheic scalp. The claims differ; the framing is now common ground.


### The recipe race is where the field's mass sits
The recipe and process filings are where the field's mass sits, and they come overwhelmingly from Chinese formulators, hospitals, universities and individuals. A Ganoderma compound shampoo, a theanine oil-control composition, a fermented Polygonum multiflorum essence. This is a formulation race, and it is the field's centre of gravity.


### The pet line is a set of one-offs
Every pet document cleans a coat with plant or microbial actives, and no applicant builds on another. A Bulgarian spore-carrying shampoo, an Indonesian waterless powder, a six-botanical dog shampoo. No applicant here extends a line of work, and nothing in the area points to a programme.


## Areas

- Active Ingredients: Botanical & Peptide Actives · 3,296 documents
- Formulation Science: Cleansing & Conditioning · 1,061 documents
- Delivery Systems: Devices & Nanotechnology · 492 documents
- Clinical, Safety & Diagnosis · 225 documents
- Consumer, Market & Manufacturing · 87 documents
- Adjacent Applications: Pet Care · 5 documents