Nylon is a synthetic polymer, a plastic, invented on February 28, 1935
by Wallace Carothers at the E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company of
Wilmington, Delaware, USA. The material was announced in 1938 and the
first nylon products; a nylon bristle toothbrush made with nylon yarn
(went on sale on February 24, 1938) and more famously, women's stockings
(went on sale on May 15, 1940). Nylon fibres are now used to make many
synthetic fabrics, and solid nylon is used as an engineering material.
Chemically, nylon is a condensation polymer made of repeating units with amide linkages between them: hence it is frequently referred to as a polyamide. It was the first synthetic fibre to be made entirely from inorganic ingredients: coal, water and air. These are formed into two intermediate chemicals, most commonly hexamethylene diamine and adipic acid (a dicarboxylic acid), which are then mixed to polymerise. The most common variant is nylon 6,6, also called nylon 66, which refers to the fact that both the diamine and the diacid have 6 carbon backbones. The diacid and diamine units alternate in the polymer chain. Therefore, unlike natural polyamides like proteins, the direction of the amide bond reverses at each bond.
Chemically, nylon is a condensation polymer made of repeating units with amide linkages between them: hence it is frequently referred to as a polyamide. It was the first synthetic fibre to be made entirely from inorganic ingredients: coal, water and air. These are formed into two intermediate chemicals, most commonly hexamethylene diamine and adipic acid (a dicarboxylic acid), which are then mixed to polymerise. The most common variant is nylon 6,6, also called nylon 66, which refers to the fact that both the diamine and the diacid have 6 carbon backbones. The diacid and diamine units alternate in the polymer chain. Therefore, unlike natural polyamides like proteins, the direction of the amide bond reverses at each bond.