CHF Polymers & People
TOMORROW'S GIANTS
"Man's chief difficulty in all such work is to imitate the imperfections of nature. His whites are too white, his surfaces are too smooth, his shapes are too regular, his products are too pure."
-Edwin Slosson (1865-1929), from his best-selling work Creative Chemistry (1919)
Stronger than a speeding bullet. Stephanie Kowlek, shown here with Du Pont coworkers Herbert Blades, Paul Morgan, and Joseph Rivers, Jr., developed a special type of polyamide, the aramid Kevlar, which entered commercial production in the early 1970s. Aramid fibers are woven into bullet-proof vests and are now being integrated into structural components for aircraft.
Photo gift of Stephanie Kwolek.
A hundred years ago few imagined that long-chain molecules inhabited worlds unseen. Today it is difficult to envision a world without them. Polymer products are the ubiquitous legacy of our age. Other centuries built structures from stone, wood, or steel. Today we engineer the structures of matter itself. We have become molecular architects.
Where, then, will tomorrow's molecular giants be? Most polymer engineers feel the days of a market dominated by a few polymers are numbered. Many see the promise of the future in specialty polymers, which will be fashioned with complex sets of properties designed for specific needs but produced in relatively low volumes. Reinforcing polymer resins with graphite, boron, and super-strong aramid fibers has already led to advanced composites that form the bodies of many of the latest spacecraft.
Other composites are finding uses much more down to earth--on the road, in fact. While Henry Ford experimented with polymer auto parts from soybeans in the 1940s and Corvettes have long excited drivers with their lean polyester and glass-fiber bodies, the 1980s have witnessed the birth of the first mass-market car with an all composite body. Reinforced plastics are economically competitive with metals in a business that must produce multiple makes of cars in a single year. Sheet-molded polyester and injection-molded polyurethanes reduce auto weight, increase fuel efficiency, and resist corrosion and dents. Few parts of a car are incapable of being replaced by composites.
The phenomenal growth of electronics and computers in recent years has catalyzed research into the creation of conductive polymers. Plastics can be made electrically conductive through the addition of carbon or metal flakes. New research is aimed at making polymers intrinsically conductive by adding chemicals like iodine and sulfur trifluoride to the polymer chain. These altered polypyrroles, polyacetylenes, and polyquinolines are too susceptible to decay to be marketable yet. Still, these modified polymers and molded plastics have promising futures as static dissipators in microcircuitry and as plastic batteries. Work in biopolymers also promises much for the years ahead. In the three decades since the discovery of the most complex nucleic acid structures, biochemists and molecular biologists have spliced genetic material, synthesized hormones, and created new strains of life. Polymer plastics and tissues work well together now, but synthetic biopolymers will far outshine today's techniques.
Production technologies of the future will combine tradition with innovation. Demand for composites in the auto industry has already led to a boom in the century-old process of compression molding. Scientists are utilizing new methods for combining previously incompatible ingredients, creating alloys and blends which often have properties better than any of their components. Commercialization is imminent for a new type of polymer factory--inside the body of a living microbe. And astronauts have already formed the first polystyrene beads in space.
The story of polymers and people has been very much the story of the making of the modern world. Solving today's challenges in polymer science and engineering will no doubt shape the future.
Molecular architects. Polymer science and engineering continue to offer challenges to many and new products for all. Pictured here is a researcher at Exxon. Courtesy of Exxon Corporation.
Music to our ears. Transparent Plexiglas from Rohm and Haas helped to shape the modern jukebox, a standard for American youth for more than a generation. Courtesy Rohm and Haas Company.
Inside computers. Advances in polymer research contribute to the phenomenal growth of today's Information Age. This chip can store as many words as the book on which it leans. Courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation.
The "goofiest" discovery. Scientists at Dow Corning and General Electric developed silicones, a family of polymers providing many industrial applications, and no small amount of fun. Courtesy of Binney & Smith, Inc.
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