Nov 25, 2002 03:12 PM
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(Updated Dec 21, 2002 12:03 AM)
I have gone through the site , but nothing in the field of education and this matter is especially to boost up the morale, for my friends in polymer field especially about those doing engineering graduation, desperately worries on choosing a wrong decision .
Abhilash .D.Varghese Polymer engineer
Area of polymer chemistry will be changing dramatically over the next five to ten years because of the emphasis on ’green’ products, ’’ . ’’Ingredients will have to be environmentally friendly, and there will be an emphasis on making polymers biodegradable. Concern about the effects of detergent products on the environment has brought new activity to a relatively mature area of polymer science.’’ Polymer is an exciting field with new frontiers to be discovered.
Today, there is almost no development of entirely new polymer materials. However, blending and compounding existing polymers has become an important part of a polymer chemist’s work. ’’Compounding is both an art and a science, ’’ ’’Quite a bit of chemistry is involved. You need to understand the reactions that go on in an extruder-the machine used to compound.’’ Compounding is often done to achieve certain properties needed for a particular application.
One of my recent projects was to develop a compounded polymeric material to be used in the manufacture of building materials ’’Body panels for these were typically made of wood, ’’ ’’But many manufacturers would like fibre plastics instead of woodin the body panels. Existing plastics were not suited for this application, so we tried blending different materials to come up with the right combination of properties.’’
One of the big requirements was high fire resistance’’Then in the area of rough use the material would not shatter. We also needed to develop a material that had good weatherability and could be mixed with pigment to get the right color.’’ The chemist and the customer collaborated to develop a material that is suited for this application.
In the 1970s and 1980s, some of the most lucrative polymer breakthroughs occurred in the area of high-performance polymers. These materials were expensive to produce but had new and desired qualities, such as high strength and temperature resistance.
This is one of the imp advent in polymer field.One example of successful high-performance polymer technology is liquid-crystal polymers (LCPs). LCPs are polymers that are highly oriented; that means that when they are heated above a certain temperature, the molecules align and flow easily. The LCP can then be pushed through a spinnaret on a spinning machine and made into a fiber, or can be injected into a small mold for an intricate part used in the electronics business. One of the benefits of LCPs is that they produce a material that is generally much stronger than those produced from traditional plastics. One aspect I have to stress is the importance of teamwork. How to make the polymer is a team decision. There are so many different aspects to bring together and different talents required.It is not just the people in the lab making the decision. We monitor the changing needs of our customers and then determine how to produce the material with the properties they want.’’
An illustration of this, says one of the pioneer(A veteran scientist from London), was when economics and environmental issues required the molding industry to reuse the scrap material that is a normal byproduct of molding plastic parts. ’’One problem with doing this, ’’ he explains, ’’is that repeated processing cycles can adversely affect the properties of the material.’’ However, by adjusting the chemistry and processing characteristics of a new LCP formulation, chemists in his developed a material that maintains its properties after many processing cycles. In this way, basic researchers brought together applications, chemists, and customers to find a mutually beneficial solution.
