Mineral sunscreens are notorious for leaving a white cast on the skin — but now, scientists have found that tweaking the shape of zinc oxide nanoparticles in the formula can help solve that problem.
The new, four-armed crystal structure, known as a tetrapod, was reported in December in the journal ACS Materials Letters, and it prevents individual nanoparticles from clumping together. This simultaneously boosts the stability of the sunscreen formulation and produces a warmer color that better matches a range of skin tones.
