The limitation on monomers is severe once you start looking at volumes. It's easy (and fun!) to come up with new monomers or ways of using unusual monomers. Super hard to get them at scale, at a cost that does not tank the product launch. I once had a very bright chemist advocating for a silane acrylate that they found in a catalog. I agreed it would do the job, but sent them off to get pricing before we went too far. Very crestfallen bright young chemist came back from purchasing.
The first moral of the story is make friends with purchasing/ supply chain. They can save you from the no-chance work and enable the merely bold.
The second moral of the story is that additives are often more cost-effective than monomers, and have impact at lower amounts.
Another great article, thank you. I am curious: do you expect the (widely agreed-upon) list of commodity thermoplastics to change within your lifetime? Are people developing specialty polymers with the idea to one day supplant a commodity thermoplastic?
The limitation on monomers is severe once you start looking at volumes. It's easy (and fun!) to come up with new monomers or ways of using unusual monomers. Super hard to get them at scale, at a cost that does not tank the product launch. I once had a very bright chemist advocating for a silane acrylate that they found in a catalog. I agreed it would do the job, but sent them off to get pricing before we went too far. Very crestfallen bright young chemist came back from purchasing.
The first moral of the story is make friends with purchasing/ supply chain. They can save you from the no-chance work and enable the merely bold.
The second moral of the story is that additives are often more cost-effective than monomers, and have impact at lower amounts.
Another great article, thank you. I am curious: do you expect the (widely agreed-upon) list of commodity thermoplastics to change within your lifetime? Are people developing specialty polymers with the idea to one day supplant a commodity thermoplastic?