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The Ubiquitous, Indispensable Superpolymer
| Article
# : |
14297 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
2,705 Words |
| Author
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George B. Kauffman
George B. Kauffman is professor of chemistry at California
State University, Fresno. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is a
contributing editor to four journals and the author of
fifteen
books and more than 950 articles on chemistry, the history of
science and technology, and chemical education. |
When nylon stockings were first put on public sale in 1940, crowds of women pushed against store windows so hard that the windows broke. One appreciative person wrote to the manufacturer of the fiber from which the stocking were made: "Dear Du Ponts: I have read about the wonderful stockings made from dirty old coal--surely you must have the angels working for you."
Although nylon is fifty years old in 1988, its production and consumption world-wide are at an all-time peak, with more than 9 billion pounds having been produced in 1987. Improved nylon fibers and resins for molded parts continue to flow from the lab, as Du Pont alone in 1987 spent $80 million on nylon research. Composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen--and used in the manufacture of such diverse products as clothing, carpets, Velcro fasteners, and fishing line--nylon is taken for granted by the present generation. Yet when it was first announced in 1938, nylon seemed like a miracle product. This first synthetic fiber initiated what has been called the materials revolution--a new era in which tailor-made synthetic materials, many with properties superior to those of natural materials, have been developed and applied to consumer products. During the half century of its existence, nylon has been the best known and one of the most widely used synthetic fibers. In a lesser-known but equally important form, solid molded nylon has also found widespread use.
The development of nylon was not quick, easy, or inexpensive. It was the product of a daring, long-term commitment of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & company of Wilmington, Delaware to basic research in the chemistry of polymers--materials whose molecules are composed of long chains of repeating groups of atoms. Du Pont spent an estimated $27 million and utilized the concentrated efforts of its best researchers--including Wallace Hume Carothers (1896-1937), the discoverer of nylon--during the eleven years that elapsed between the inception of the fundamental research program and the production of nylon in the first commercial plant at Seaford, Delaware.
To develop the new fiber, Carothers and his team systematically studied the relations between the properties of molecules and their structure. Proceeding from known to unknown molecules, the team synthesized ever longer chains of repeating groups of molecules that were roughly similar to the chains that can be formed by linking paper clips. Finally, the team could produce superchains whose molecular weights were equivalent to the weight of 10-20 thousand hydrogen atoms. Filaments of these giant molecules could be pulled into fibers like
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