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Teflon was discovered by accident in 1938, when the DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett opened a cylinder of gas that weighed full but released nothing. Sawing it open, he found the gas had turned into a white, slippery powder that almost nothing would stick to.

Deepwater, New Jersey, 1938

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The story behind the card

Plunkett was working on new refrigerant gases at DuPont's Jackson Laboratory and had stored tetrafluoroethylene gas as a starting material. Inside the cylinder its small molecules had joined into long chains, a process called polymerisation, forming polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE. PTFE resists almost every chemical and is one of the most slippery solids known. Its first important use was in the Manhattan Project, the wartime atomic bomb programme, where it sealed equipment against highly corrosive uranium compounds. DuPont registered the Teflon name in 1945. Non-stick pans came later: in the 1950s the French engineer Marc Grégoire, urged by his wife Colette, coated cookware with it and founded Tefal in 1956.

Türkçe oku
Teflon 1938'de tesadüfen bulundu: DuPont kimyageri Roy Plunkett, tartıda dolu görünen ama vanası açılınca hiçbir şey çıkmayan bir gaz tüpüyle karşılaştı. Tüpü kesip açtığında gazın, neredeyse hiçbir şeyin yapışmadığı beyaz, kaygan bir toza dönüştüğünü gördü.
Deepwater, New Jersey, 1938

Plunkett, DuPont'un Jackson Laboratuvarı'nda yeni soğutucu gazlar üzerinde çalışıyordu ve tüpte başlangıç maddesi olarak tetrafloroetilen gazı saklıyordu. Tüpün içinde bu gazın küçük molekülleri birbirine eklenip uzun zincirler oluşturmuştu; buna polimerleşme denir. Ortaya çıkan madde politetrafloroetilendi, kısaca PTFE. PTFE neredeyse hiçbir kimyasaldan etkilenmez ve bilinen en kaygan katılardan biridir. İlk önemli kullanım alanı, İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nda atom bombasını geliştiren Manhattan Projesi oldu: Aşındırıcı uranyum bileşikleriyle temas eden donanımda sızdırmazlık sağladı. DuPont, Teflon adını 1945'te tescil ettirdi. Yapışmaz tava ise daha sonra geldi: Fransız mühendis Marc Grégoire, eşi Colette'in ısrarıyla tavaları bununla kapladı ve 1956'da Tefal'i kurdu.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Polytetrafluoroethylene
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