Overview

Organic polymers belong to a family of materials whose industrial development is very recent. It is believed that the first synthetic plastic material was developed in 1862 by the English chemist Parkes by mixing sulfuric acid and nitric acid with cotton wool. The nitrocellulose thus obtained was stabilized with castor oil and camphor, and dyes were added and various objects were produced using this mixture. However, for production on an industrial scale, this formula had to be modified slightly and Parkesine was forgotten, to be replaced by celluloid , developed by the American Hyatt brothers. It is believed that they developed this product in 1869 for a competition organized by New York City to discover a substitute material for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls. The same scenario repeated with the other pioneers of plastics: Bakelite , patented in 1909, was in fact a laboratory discovery of the 1870s; Plexiglass , the first organic glass, was synthesized in 1877 but it would be developed only in the 20 ^th century.

Concurrent to this flowering of discoveries, which was occasionally fortuitous but always the achievement of brilliant chemists, there was a need for a comprehensive reflection on the structure of these materials. Thus was born macromolecular chemistry.

Among the pioneers who marked the development of scientific studies on organic polymers, we must mention Staudinger, whose research dates back to the 1920s. He was one of the first to introduce the concept of macromolecule and his team s research won the Nobel Prize...