Teflon is familiar to all of us from the advertisements of non-stick cookware and paints. But, Teflon is just the brand name. Polytetrafluoroethylene is the chemical name of Teflon. Quite a mouthful, right?
Teflon is a compound made of tetrafluoroethylene monomers. The discovery of Teflon was not deliberate. A young scientist named Roy Plunkett who worked at Du Pont accidentally made Teflon while he was working on a refrigerant compound. He combined hydrochloric acid with tetrafluoroethylene to obtain a new compound.
The gas formed in the reaction cooled down and transformed to a white powder overnight forming the new material – Teflon.
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