Nylon Centralized Development

The book Science and Corporate Strategy DuPont R D, 1902-1980 by Hounshell and Smith (1988) presents a well-documented story of the long journey of nylon from discovery to the marketplace. A large number of people were involved. The effort received many lucky breaks, as well as entering and abandoning numerous blind alleys, and requiring dedication and determination when things looked bleak. The journey can be divided into a number of phases that overlap in time the exploration-discovery phase, the development phase, and the commercialization-business phases. 

Carothers collected much physical, chemical, and mechanical data on the fibers, but he did not know how the data correlated with ultimate practical behavior and performance to the satisfaction of consumers. The only way to know whether nylon would find favor in the marketplace was to make fabric samples and to prepare garments to be worn and to be maintained. In the summer of 1934, his group also had to determine which combination of diacid and diamine would be the best, within the range from 2 to 10 carbon atoms. The initial focus was on the 5-10 polymer enough polymers were 

In the meantime, the mental condition of Carothers deteriorated inexorably. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1936. But he had another breakdown in the summer of 1936, and finally, in April 1937, he committed suicide with cyanide in a Philadelphia hotel room. At Christmas 1937, the Van Raalte Mill in New Jersey finally turned out full-fashioned hosiery with excellent appearance and free of defects. They distributed 56 hosiery and lingerie garments to wives of the men on the nylon project. The majority of the women thought that the stockings were very durable, but they wrinkled too easily and were too lustrous and slippery. 

The Executive Committee of DuPont authorized a pilot plant on January 1938, which took 6 months to build and another 6 months to provide sufficient data to help in the construction of a commercial plant. In October 1938, the Executive Committee allocated 8.5 million to build a 4 million pound a year plant at Seaford Delaware, which began operation in January 1940. Charles Stine announced this new product 

This textile fiber is the first man-made organic textile fiber prepared wholly from new material from the mineral kingdom. Though wholly fabricated from such common raw material as coal, water, and air, nylon can be fashioned into filaments as strong as steel, as fine as spider s web, yet more elastic than any of the common natural fibers. 

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This development started with an observation of Pennings and Kiel (1965) that, when dilute solutions of polyethylene were cooled under conditions of continuous stirring, very fine fibres were precipitated on the stirrer. These fibres had a remarkable morphology a fine central core of extended CH2-chains, with an outer sheath of folded chain material. Electron microscopy revealed a beautiful "shish kebab" structure (see Fig. 19.16). Shish kebabs have also been observed in experiments without any stirring. For example, by washing polyethylene powder with xylene (Jamet and Perret, 1973) and by crystallising nylon 4 from a glycerol/water mixture (Sakaoku et al., 1968). 

In this review we have briefly examined the technical and business events that mark the history and development of nylon-66. The central message is one of continuing adaptation, the clue to a growth profile that persists even as its fiftieth anniversary in 1988 nears. 

The basic patent application was submitted on June 10, 1938, in Germany [l7j. The I.G. immediately recognized the potential of the new polymer as a counterpart to DuPont s nylon 66. They initiated an intense research and development program on polyamides. This included the synthesis of the necessary starting materials caprolactam, and also hexamethylene diamine and nylon salt for 66 and copolyamides. (Adipic acid was already available). Work was taken up at several locations, mainly Ludwigshafen on Rhine, Leuna (near Leipzig) and Berlin. BASF at Ludwigshafen was chosen because they held a central position in plastics application development within I.G. Far-ben, and because some intermediates were already available there. 

The new class of polymer materials, organic- inorganic (clay) nanocomposites, was also reported as an excellent FR composition [234]. Nylon-6 clay nanocomposites, first developed by Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories, are materials with unique properties. The nylon- 6 clay nanocomposites (clay mass fraction from 2%-70%) are synthesized by ring - opening polymerization of e-caprolactam in the presence of cation exchanged montmorillonite clay [235]. 

At this point in the discussion of the mechanical properties of montmorillonite-nylon 6 polymer nanocomposites, a review of the work carried out by the Toyota Central Research Development Labs, Inc. that initiated an explosion of research and development of polymer-montmorillonite nanocomposite technology in relation to the subsequent work found above is provided. A series of three articles appeared in the Journal of Materials Research in 1993 in issue number 5. 

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