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Touchstones of Polymer Processing

A meeting entitled "Touchstones of Polymer Processing" was organized by the Polymer Processing Institute (New Jersey Institute of Technology) and Z. Tadmor was held on May 10– 12, 2002. They explored the past and prospects of polymer processing. This is always a most useful enterprise. A final report has now been issued. It calls for the creation of a new macromolecular engineering (macromolecular process science or macromolecular technology) which bridges gaps. Macromolecular engineering would lead to mathematically designing macromolecules, their structure development in polymer processing and properties. Much of this is not new. Basic studies of structure development may conservatively dated back to Katayama, Amano and Nakamura in 1968 (Koll. Z. Z. Polym. 225, p. 125). All of this is laudable. A major problem is however that the perspective produced in the Touchstones final report is not a balanced world view but rather one of American chemical engineering. The organizers who were all educated in America or American style chemical engineering departments view polymer processing through the eyes of transport phenomena. The words they use in their final report strongly reflect this. Studying structure development and properties of solids involve introducing new disciplines such as crystallography, advanced optics and x-ray diffraction. Polymer processing has been much more extensively developed as an academic subject and applied to industrial problems in Germany, than in the U. S. A. This was largely accomplished under the leadership of Professor Georg Menges at the RWTH Aachen from the 1960s to 1980s. This merged polymer processing with mechanical engineering and produced graduates with backgrounds in the design of mechanical machinery and mechanics of solids as well as the equivalent of America transport phenomena. The German polymer processing machinery industry has maintained a dominant position in the world for a half century. Today, this machinery industry is filled with employees who are the graduates of German polymer processing programs such as that created by Menges. The tradition of Menges continues in many German universities. The German chemical industry led by BASF, Bayer, Degussa and Ticona is as strong as any or more so on a population basis. Planning for the future needs to take account for the Menges tradition. The "Touchstones in Polymer Processing" meeting calls for a new discipline of "Macromolecular Engineering". This is not a new term. It has been widely used for about 20 years notably by J. P. Kennedy of the University of Akron. There is a 1991 book published by Hanser Verlag "Designed Polymers by Carbocationic Macromolecular Engineering: Theory and Practice" by the American-Hungarian pair of Kennedy with B. Ivan. They state (p. 5) that " the aim of macromolecular engineering is the total synthesis of macromolecules down to the smallest constituents; it embraces the control of all molecular parameters including macroand micro-architecture, molecular weight and molecular weight distribution." Kennedy does not stand-alone. This may be indicated by the papers of P. Teyssie of the University of Liege, Belgium, and others e. g. the multipart "Macromolecular Engineering of Polylactones and Polylactides" (e. g. Macromolecules 25, p. 4242 (1992)). There is much discussion in the final report that the future should involve multiple separate research groups working together and the Europeans are ahead. The purpose of the activities in Europe was however not scientific but political. It was to bring together the scientific length communities of the new European union and to have the more developed countries help the less developed. As a political enterprise it worked very well. This could be seen in PPS-18, Guimarães, Portugal. In terms of scientific accomplishment it is more open to question. It would be good if American universities similarly worked with those in Central and South America. The future of Polymer Processing activity is a good subject for discussion at a continuing workshops. However, a more balanced view is needed. Let us have Professor Menges speak on the Aachen achievement and have the German processing machinery industry represented. For a new "macromolecular engineering", the ideas of Professor Kennedy need to be represented. James. L. White