A pleasant fragrance is one of important attributes that consumers expect from household cleaning compositions. For example, in dish washing liquids or hard surface cleaners, it is highly desirable to have a cleaning composition that combines high cleaning efficacy and pleasant fragrance as an additional benefit or indicator for cleanliness. Typically, a cleaning composition contains a surfactant system and a fragrance that is dissolved or dispersed in the composition. Such a composition needs to contain a relatively large amount of fragrance since the fragrance tends to be diluted and washed away as the composition is utilized.
It is highly desirable to have a cleaning composition that can release or activate fragrance while the composition is being utilized for its intended purpose such that a reduced amount of fragrance can be included in the composition without sacrificing the level of fragrance experience for the user. It is also desirable to have a cleaning composition that both provides aesthetically pleasing features and improved fragrance properties. There have been attempts to include fragrance particles in a cleaning composition to more efficiently deliver fragrances. However, such attempts do not address the aesthetic features of cleaning compositions.
Structured liquids are known in the art for suspending beads in liquid cleaning compositions. The means for providing the structure to the liquid includes using particular surfactants that thicken the liquid, using salt, or by adding thickening agents such as polymers and gums to thicken the liquid so as to be able to suspend beads. The beads can be designed to provide aesthetic appeals to enhance consumer acceptance and usage. For example, the beads can include pigments or colorants to provide aesthetic features in the cleaning composition. However, the general spherical configuration of a bead may not always be an optimal configuration to provide the aesthetic and other beneficial properties.
An alternative configuration for a bead is a film fragment. For example, a toothpaste product with film fragments, which product has a water-activity of about 0.8, is commercially available and the film fragments are stable in the product. However, a film fragment, which has a larger surface area than a bead, tends to pose dimensional and compositional stability challenges. A film fragment is more prone to dissolve or deform in a structured liquid. The stability issues are more pronounced when the structured liquid has high water and surfactant contents. However, a film fragment cannot be merely designed to make it completely insoluble or stable since the fragment may interfere with the performance and properties of the cleaning composition.