Du Pont Central Research - Polymer Science

Polymer Science

Owen Webster discovered group-transfer polymerization (GTP), the first new polymerization process developed since living anionic polymerization. The major aspects of the mechanism of the reaction were determined and the process was quickly converted to commercial application for automotive finishes and ink jet inks. The basic process of group transfer also has application to general organic synthesis, including natural products.

At about the same time, Andrew Janowicz developed a useful version of cobalt catalyzed chain transfer for controlling the molecular weight of free radicalpolymerizations. The technology has been further developed by Alexei Gridnev and Steven Ittel. It, too, was quickly commercialized and a fundamental understanding of the process developed over a longer period of time.

Rudolph Pariser was the director of the Advanced Materials Science and Engineering at the time of these advances.

In 1995, Maurice Brookhart, professor at the University of North Carolina and a DuPont CRD consultant, invented a new generation of post-metallocene catalysts for olefin coordination polymerization based upon late transition metals with his postdoctoral student, Lynda Johnson who later joined CRD. The technology, DuPont’s Versipol olefin polymerization technology, was developed by a substantial team of CRD scientists over the next ten years.