L&P: What is it?
By Katie Barnes | 29 October 2019 | Expert Advice, Feature
A question I hear at least once a day from techs, is ‘What is L&P’ or ‘What is liquid & powder’?
It is alarming to be made aware of how many techs don’t understand what liquid & powder is. Understanding the terminology and chemistry behind the products we are working with is essential.
L&P is a well-used industry acronym for liquid & powder. ‘Acrylic’ is a two-part system of liquid & powder. The proper term for the liquid & powder we use as nail technicians is monomer and polymer.
Acrylics are a special family of monomers and/or oligomers and polymers used to create nail enhancement products, including gel and L&P enhancements.
With liquid & powder, the powder has already been polymerised to its full extent whereas gel is a similar product in which the monomers and oligomers (strings of monomers) stay in a semi-liquid/semi-solid state because it hasn’t yet polymerised. Think of gel as pre-mixed acrylic.
The word ‘Acrylic’ and ‘Gel’ lend themselves to confusion because they are in fact the same family. Gel describes the product’s physical state, but over the years it has become a generic name of the product category, just as acrylic has for liquid & powder.
Liquid & Powder and gel describes the physical state that the acrylic nail product comes in.
Newly on the market are poly acrygel (acrylic/gel) products; a hybrid between liquid & powder and gel. Acrygel uses a tri-polymer technology, taking the oligomers from gels and polymers from liquid and powder and polish.
Monomer
More commonly known as ‘Liquid’. A monomer is a molecule, which binds to other molecules to form a polymer. Nail liquid is a monomer made mostly of ethyl methacrylate (EMA) and sometimes also includes other monomers and additives. Monomer often has a purple tone to it, which contains UV Inhibitors and helps to prevent the acrylic from yellowing.
Polymer
More commonly known as ‘Powder’. It is synthetic and consists of large molecules made up of a linked series of repeated simple monomers.
Co-Polymer
Polymers that are made of two or more different types of monomers. A mix percent of ethyl (Soft) and poly – methyl (Hard) methacrylate monomers.
Chemical process
Petroleum is the raw ingredient used to create both liquid & powder. Both liquid & powder begin as a liquid monomer.
Liquid: The liquid is prepared and synthesised from the petroleum.
Powder: During manufacturing, the monomer is placed in a large mixer, where it is diluted with water. As monomer is hydrophobic (doesn’t like water), it does not dissolve but remains suspended as tiny beads. Whilst mixing rapidly, the initiator and catalyst are added, making the liquid monomer convert to polymer. The water is drained away, the beads dried, and additives such as pigments are added.
Ensure that you have a comprehensive understanding of the chemicals and terminology that we as nail professionals work with every day. To read more about the chemistry of the nail products we use, I highly recommend Doug Schoon’s Nail Structure and Product Chemistry book.
Love Katie B x