History of Polyurethane Foams

The history of polyurethane foams and of polyurethanes in general is not that long for a plastic material. It has been characterised by one special feature the consistent changes of the industry. 

When Otto Bayer started his research on this new class of plastic material built from the addition reaction of isocyanates and hydroxyl containing materials in the years 1936/1937 he envisioned a plastic material which could be tailored to many different applications by the broad variety of acidic hydrogen containing compounds already available. 

But there were also setbacks to this concept. The first major drawback was the fact that the necessary diisocyanates were not available on an industrial scale and large scale synthesis of these compounds seemed to be a rather high hurdle. 

A second major point was an obstacle that Bayer and his group faced again and again. When they tried to make the polyurethanes they envisioned in solid form, like films, etc., they always ended up with gas bubbles in their plastics. That was due to the inefficiency of the methods available to synthesise pure water free material. After encountering this effect for nearly four years Bayer made a bold move in line with the concept use what you cannot prevent - in this case the formation of gas bubbles [1,2]. Thus Bayer s group started to make polyurethane foams. 

Although these new lightweight porous materials were envisioned as supportive materials as well as insulative materials in the base patents [3,4] their market development remained slow. This can be seen by the fact that even in 1952 polyisocyanates, mainly toluene diisocyanate (TDI), were available worldwide in quantities of less than 100 tonnes. After this rather hesitant start of polyurethane history and the first major switch from solid materials to porous foamed plastics, the industry has been characterised by significant changes in concept and the resulting industrial application of these switches. 

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