Facts about Nylon
Currently, various types of nylons are being manufactured in the form of fiber, sheets, and molded plastics.
Consequently, nylons often have high crystallinity and make excellent fibers.
A wide range of other nylons have been produced and are named using the above-mentioned convention.
To overcome this problem, a crystalline, solid "nylon salt" can be formed at room temperature, using an exact one-to-one ratio of the acid and base to neutralize each other.
Given the way polyamides are formed, nylon would seem to be limited to unbranched, straight chains.
The properties of Nylon 6 are somewhat similar to those of Nylon 6,6—except for the melting temperature (N6 is lower) and some fiber properties in products like carpets and textiles.
Nylon fibers are now used in clothing, ropes, carpets, guitar strings, racket strings, fishing lines, and nets, as well as for pantyhose and parachutes.
Initially used to make nylon-bristled toothbrushes (in 1938), it was soon made into fabric suitable for women's stockings (in 1940).
Engineering grade nylon is processed by extrusion, casting, and injection molding.
The name nylon is given to a family of synthetic polymers first produced on February 28, 1935, by Gerard J. Berchet of Wallace Carothers' research group at DuPont (E.I.
Additional varieties of nylon include copolymerized dicarboxylic acid/diamine products that are not based upon the monomers listed above.
Block nylon tends to be less crystalline, except near the surfaces due to shearing stresses during formation.
When the parallel strands in nylon 6,6 are aligned properly, the chains can be held together by repeated hydrogen bonds.
Other nylons are copolymers of N-6,6/N6, or N-6,6/N-6/N-12, and so forth.
Another explanation is that the name nylon was derived from "New York and London," the hometowns of the chemists working on the materials sythesis.
Nylon was the first commercially successful polymer and the first synthetic fiber to be made entirely from building blocks derived from coal, in the presence of water and air.
The amount of crystallinity depends on the details of formation, as well as on the kind of nylon.
Most nylons are formed by reacting two types of building blocks: a diamine (which is a chemical base) and a dicarboxylic acid (which, as its name suggests, is an acid).
Nylons are composed of long-chain molecules, or polymers, made by linking smaller building blocks, or monomers.
Consequently, in order to compete, other companies (particularly the German firm BASF) developed Nylon 6, in which each chain is made from a single type of monomer called caprolactam.
During World War II, nylon replaced Asian silk in parachutes.