It Has Stuck Around for 53 Years : Product: Decades after a young chemist accidentally discovered Teflon in a Du Pont lab, the substance continues to improve the lives of Americans through its numerous applications.
“Something’s wrong.”
These words must have been on the lips of Roy J. Plunkett, a 27-year-old chemist, as he was working at the Du Pont Co. laboratory in Deepwater, N.J., on April 6, 1938. Plunkett was conducting research on refrigeration gases when he put various compounds of Freon into cylinders.
But the Freon gas seemed to disappear from the cylinders, although weight measurements suggested that it was still present. When Plunkett opened the cylinders, he found a substance that was white and waxy--surely of no use to researchers interested in refrigeration.
Yet it was still a remarkable substance in that it was friction-free (tantamount to rubbing wet ice against wet ice) and didn’t interact or break down when exposed to solvents or extreme temperatures, ranging from minus 273 to 250 degrees centigrade. The substance, chemically speaking, was a form of tetrafluoroethylene, which Plunkett dubbed Teflon for short and continued his research.
The big news at Du Pont in 1938 was not Teflon, however, it was nylon, also developed by a company chemist, Wallace Carothers, after 13 years of research costing $27 million.
Teflon made its formal debut in 1944, but few people knew about it. Scientists in the Manhattan Project producing the atom bomb found that it was the only coating that worked in the casing that would contain the volatile elements. But it made no encore until the late 1950s because it took scientists that long to understand its makeup.
They found that the reason Teflon was so slippery was its unique molecular structure: Its core of carbon atoms is surrounded by fluorine atoms, creating a bond so strong that it repels interaction with anything else. That makes for not only slipperiness but also virtual invulnerability to heat and solvents.
Teflon’s most extensive use would be in the electronics industry, first as insulation and corrosion protection for telephone wires, later for computer cables and as a coating for light bulbs to prevent shattering. And a Teflon container would hold the tiny semiconductor chip that revolutionized the computer industry.
The space age of the 1960s used Teflon in heat shields for rocket and satellite re-entry, in outer layers of space suits and in lining for ducts carrying liquid oxygen.
Then came the golden age of the product in the home--Teflon pots and pans. An estimated 500 million coated over the years have lessened the problem of burned skillets.
In recent years Teflon has revolutionized architecture and building codes with its qualities of flame resistance and translucence. Its biggest application may well be as coating for the 10-acre fiberglass fabric covering the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan, and its most patriotic as an insulator against corrosion between the steel framework and copper skin of the restored Statue of Liberty.
Teflon has enormous medicinal value because of its compatibility with living tissue; hence, it has been used in artificial veins and arteries, heart patches and replacement knee ligaments for more than a million patients. A Teflon powder injected into the throats of victims of extreme vocal-cord relaxation has supported the cords to such a degree as to permit more normal employment.
Indirectly, Teflon has improved the health and safety of Americans through coated athletic gear, protected gaskets, seals and bearings in automobiles, treated handsaw and power-saw blades, and fabrics that are waterproof but still breathable for outdoor use.
To be sure, Teflon’s history is not without problems, although more than 2 billion pounds of the waxy stuff have been produced since 1938. Du Pont’s patents have expired, and foreign competition has been keen. A couple of decades ago the product couldn’t be produced fast enough to meet demand, but now sales have settled down to a much smaller growth rate, averaging 6 to 8% per year.
Now Du Pont is trying to find new uses for its mature product, as, for example, in Teflon-treated wallpaper, which would be scrubbable and more nearly impervious to permanent dirt.
