Silicone

Silicone

Noun · /ˈsɪlɪkəʊn/ · a synthetic polymer containing silicon, oxygen, and organic groups

Definition

Silicone is a family of synthetic polymer materials made from chains of silicon and oxygen atoms, with organic groups attached. The result is a uniquely versatile substance: flexible yet strong, heat-resistant from well below freezing to over two hundred degrees Celsius, waterproof, electrically insulating, and chemically inert. Silicone appears in countless everyday products — the flexible seal around a shower tray, non-stick baking moulds, medical implants, contact lenses, lubricants, waterproof coatings, and the flexible gaskets in electronics. It is not a natural material; it is an entirely engineered one, first developed in the 1940s. The word silicone is often confused with silicon, the chemical element, but the two are fundamentally different: silicon is a hard grey metalloid used in microchips; silicone is a soft flexible polymer that merely contains silicon atoms in its chain.

Origin

The word silicone was coined in 1901 by the British chemist Frederic Kipping, who was studying organic silicon compounds. He combined silicon with the suffix -one by analogy with ketone, since he believed the compounds he was studying had a similar structure. He was partly wrong about the chemistry — silicones turned out to be polymers rather than simple ketone analogues — but the name stuck. Kipping himself thought silicones were scientifically uninteresting curiosities. It was not until the 1940s, through work at Corning Glass and Dow Chemical, that silicone became industrially significant. Today it is a multi-billion-pound global industry.