Polymers have for lengthy been an integral part of our everyday lives so much in fact that examples is available almost ubiquitously. We have an effect which leads us to trust that polymers are only plastics used for packaging, in household objects and for making fibres, however is only the tip of the iceberg.
Polymers are employed in all sorts of applications you might not have thought much about. This blog enlightens you in regards to the story behind polymers and how it’s got evolved from the time for everyone several functions across a host of industries.
Origin of polymer science
Humans have got good thing about the versatility of polymers for years and years as oils, tars, resins and gums. However, it was not before industrial revolution how the polymer industry started to realize. In reality, the birth of polymer science could possibly be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. Within the 1830s, Charles Goodyear developed the vulcanization process that transformed the sticky latex of natural rubber into a useful elastomer for tire use. In 1909, Leo Hendrik Baekeland created a resin from two very common chemicals, phenol and formaldehyde. The reaction between these chemicals led the way to build up a resin, called Bakelite, named after him. It had been this resin that served like a harbinger to many people of the common polymers we use today. The word “polymer” is derived from the Greek roots “poly” and “mer,” which assembled means “many parts.” Polymeric substances are made of several chemical units called monomers, which are joined together into large molecular chains consisting of 1000s of atoms.
Classification of polymers
Judging by their origin, sumitomo chemical asia might be considered synthetic or natural polymers. Natural polymers are the ones polymers that exist in nature knowning that which are isolated from plant and animal resources. Starch, cellulose, proteins, natural rubber etc. are several types of natural polymers. Though they’re processed to find the end product, since basic material comes from a natural source, these polymers are termed as natural polymers. Natural rubber originating from tree latex it’s essentially a polymer produced from isoprene units with a small percentage of impurities inside it.
On this context, biopolymers can also be significant. There’s huge variety of biopolymers like polysaccharides, polyesters, and polyamides. They may be naturally produced by microorganisms. The genetic manipulation of microorganisms makes method for enormous possibility of the biotechnological production of biopolymers with tailored properties suited to high-value medical application like tissue engineering and drug delivery.
Synthetic polymers, as their name indicates, are synthesized in the laboratory or factory through a series of chemical reactions from low molecular weight compounds. Through the functional standpoint they could be classified into four main categories: thermoplastics, thermosets, elastomers and artificial fibres. Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is but one such thermoplastic produced by the polymerization of the monomer, methyl methacrylate (MMA). PMMA is commonly referred to as acrylic plastic and lends its properties to some number of consumer product applications. Being both a thermoplastic and transparent plastic, acrylic is used extensively in the automotive industry in trunk release handles, master cylinder, and dashboard lighting. Consumer products which have a very constituent component of acrylic plastic include aquariums, motorcycle helmet lenses, paint, furniture, picture framing, and umbrella clamps, and the like.
A number of the other synthetic polymers we used in us include Nylons, found in fabrics and textiles, Teflon, found in non-stick pans and Polyvinyl Chloride, found in pipes.
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