The Time at DuPont

Carothers began to work at the Experimental Station in Delaware in February 1928. His primary goal was syntheses of polymers having molar masses above 4,000 Da, the maximum mass achieved by E. Fischer in Berlin by the stepwise synthesis of polysaccharides. Most of Carothers activities in the following nine years may be subdivided into the following five groups  

Syntheses of high molar mass ahphatic polyesters 

Cyclic and polymeric anhydrides of aliphatic dicarboxylic acids 

His work will be discussed below along the above given order. Carothers published around 60 patents and more than 60 papers (including three review articles [9-11]) part of which will be cited below [9-51]. 

In connection with the work on linear polyesters the Carothers group explored syntheses and properties of monomeric and dimeric cyclic esters in much detail [31-38]. Beyond academic curiosity these activities were motivated by two aspects 

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