Every cook loves non-stick cookware! This week, in commemoration National Teflon Day on April 6, Tidbits offers the history of this breakthrough material, considered the most slippery material in existence.
• In 1938, 27-year-old research chemist Roy Plunkett was working at the DuPont research laboratory in Edison, New Jersey. Plunkett had been assigned with the task of developing an alternative to existing fluorocarbon-based refrigerants, working with gases related to the Freon refrigerant. He and his assistant had produced 100 lbs. of tetrafluoroethylene during their experiments, and needed a way to store it. The TFE was placed in small cylinders and frozen. But when the two checked on the refrigerant some time later, all the cylinders seemed empty, although their weight was the same as if they were full. After sawing a bottle open, the interior of the cylinder was coated with a waxy white solid that was extremely slippery. That powder was polytetrafluoroethylene, produced from the cylinder’s iron interior acting as a catalyst at high pressure, causing the TFE gas molecules to polymerize.
• DuPont obtained a patent for the synthetic polymer in 1945, giving it the name Teflon from the substance’s chemical name (poly)te(tra)fl(uoroethylene), and “–on” at the end.
• Although we think of Teflon as a non-stick coating for pots and pans, it was first used chiefly for industrial and military purposes. In the late 1940s, DuPont formed a partnership with General Motors, producing more than 2 million pounds (910,000 kg) of polytetrafluoroethylene every year at a Parkersburg, West Virginia plant.
• Teflon was also used as a component during the Manhattan Project, the code name for the United States’ effort to develop the first nuclear weapons. When U.S. intelligence received reports that German scientists were working on an atomic bomb, the Project began research and development for the Allies. The Project’s uranium plant was located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where Teflon was used as a material to coat valves and gaskets. The Teflon coating inside the pipes allowed for resistance to highly reactive uranium hexafluoride.
• Teflon has been vital to space travel as well. Due to its resistance to high heat, as much as 570 degrees F (300 C), it’s been used in space suits and rocket components. Teflon parts were used in the Mars Exploration Rovers, because of the ability to survive temperature extremes and travel over the planet’s rocky terrain.
• In the world of medicine, Teflon is used for surgical catheters, prostheses, and artificial body parts, including synthetic arteries. It’s a stain repellant for clothing, carpets, and upholstery, it’s used in windshield wipers and light bulbs, and it’s found in plumbers’ tape for sealing joints in water pipes and heating ducts.
• So what about those non-stick pans? In 1954, a French engineer named Marc Gregoire coated his wife’s cooking pans with Teflon, a product he had been using on his fishing tackle. After achieving success, two years later, he introduced the first Teflon-coated pans, using the brand name Tefal, combining “Tef” and “al” (from aluminum). In 1961, American professor and inventor Marion Trozzolo, who had been manufacturing Teflon-coated scientific utensils, marketed the U.S.’s first Teflon-coated pan, naming it “The Happy Pan.” One of Trozzolo’s original pans can be found at the Smithsonian Institute.