Roy J. Plunkett

Roy J. Plunkett (born 26 June 1910 in Orange County, California, † May 12, 1994 ) was an American chemist who discovered the polymer Teflon 1938.

Life

Roy Plunkett was born on 26 June 1910 in Orange County, California. He later moved to New Carlisle, Ohio, and then to Pleasant Hill, Ohio, where he went to the Newton High School. He studied at Manchester College, Indiana (BA chemistry 1932) and at Ohio State University ( Ph.D. chemistry 1936). In 1936 he was appointed by the company " E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company " as a research chemist for the Jackson Laboratory in Deepwater, New Jersey, enlisted.

On April 6, 1938 Plunkett checked a frozen and pressurized container with 45 kg of tetrafluoroethylene content, which was used for the preparation of CFC- refrigerant. When he opened the container to implement a lot of tetrafluoroethylene with hydrogen chloride to chlorine fluorine hydrocarbon, he noted that nothing came out of the container. The pressure gauges indicated no pressure. Accordingly, the content would need to be escaped. A weighing but still shows the same weight as the previous day. When he examined the container more closely, he discovered a white, waxy powder that had formed and not previously found in the container. The tetrafluoroethylene in the tank had been converted by polymerization in polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon ), a waxy solid with amazing features such as corrosion resistance, low surface adhesion and high heat resistance. On February 4, 1941, the inventor was awarded U.S. Patent number 2,230,654 issued retroactively effective July 1, 1939.

Furthermore, Plunkett worked as chief chemist at the production of the gasoline additive tetraethyl involved ( from 1939 to 1952, DuPont Chambers Works). He then headed the freon production at DuPont until he retired in 1975. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the inventor in 1973 in the Hall of Fame of plastics and 1985. Plunkett died on 12 May 1994 at the age of 83 years.

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