Questions of every day nº1

If nothing sticks to the teflon: How does he adhere to the frying pans?

First it is necessary to tell that it is the teflon. The teflon, it is the trade name registered by DuPont to refer to the politetrafluoretileno.

What hides under this product that seems to repel all the meals remains is about his molecules. The fluorine that wraps them repels almost any material and prevents these from adhering to the teflon. Not in vain, it has the lowest coefficient of friction of the materials that we know. Another fundamental characteristic is his impermeability.

His history is well curious: Roy J. Plunkett (right in the image) and his assistant Jack Rebok (left in the image) they realized experiments for the company DuPont somewhere near the year 1938. In one of them, they wanted to obtain major quantities of tetraflouretileno (TFE). This material, after a simple treatment, was vaporizado and it was happening across a few pipes and meters of flow, later to finish in a camera where other chemicals were applied to him so that it was reacting. As in many other inventions of the history, the find was fortuitous. They detected an error in the system and the motive was not explained. On having dismantled some valves, they realized that there was a white substance in the shape of dust. The TFE there was polimerizado. They tried with many acids and dissolvers, but they did not achieve that it was affecting to this polymer. Then, the history we already know it. The DuPont was interested and happened to be part of his scale of polymers.

But as is the teflon fixed to the frying pans then? Should not it repel the same way to these? Two skills exist to cover of teflon the surfaces of pans and frying pans.

The method of the sintetización, which is similar to the smelting. It is a question of raising the temperature of the teflon even more or less 400ºC and once done this, it is printed strongly on the surface that we are interested in. Nevertheless, it is necessary to say that when this one cools down, it can jump with the time and separate of the frying pan.

Nevertheless, another option is that of the "bombing". There is modified chemically the side of the teflon that we want to give to the frying pan, bombarding it with ions in an electrical field and in the gap, with which, we will manage to start or remove many atoms of fluorine of the part that we want to hook in the frying pan or pan, then this part can get hooked up since what towards that the teflon was repelling materials was – as we have said earlier - the fluorine about the molecules. Once eliminated or started these atoms, we can modify this face adding to him any other material that should favor the addition, as for example, the oxygen.

Since you see, this second option is the one that gives better results, what explains the motive for which one is the method most used to adhere the teflon to another type of materials.

Although it is much known by the recovering that we have just explained, the true thing is that the teflon is used in many other things: isolation of cables of communication of information, in clothes and hangings (to repel water and spots), in revetments of planes, rockets, spaceships, in prosthesis, in electronic components, paintings, etc.

Sources:

Teflon

DuPont - Teflon Granular PTFE

Politetrafluoretileno