DuPont was trying to invent a new refrigerant — it got a waxy solid that stuck to nothing

In 1938, Roy Plunkett, a chemist at DuPont's Kinetic Chemicals laboratory in New Jersey, was working on a new class of refrigerants called chlorofluorocarbons. He had filled a small pressure bottle with tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) gas and stored it in dry ice. When he opened the valve, nothing came out — the bottle was still full, but the gas had stopped flowing.

Plunkett sawed the bottle open and found the interior coated with a waxy, white, slippery powder. The gas had polymerised into polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), with the iron from the container acting as a catalyst under high pressure. The material was incredibly slippery — nothing would stick to it — and was chemically inert, heat-resistant, and had excellent electrical insulation properties.

DuPont patented PTFE in 1941 and trademarked it as Teflon in 1945. Its first major use was on the Manhattan Project, where it coated valves and seals handling highly reactive uranium hexafluoride — a chemical so corrosive it would destroy ordinary materials. By 1948, DuPont was producing over 910,000 kg of Teflon per year. In 1954, French engineer Marc Grégoire created the first non-stick frying pan, marketed as Tefal.

Teflon went on to become one of the most versatile materials ever discovered. It is used in aerospace wiring, Gore-Tex waterproof fabric, medical grafts, plumber's tape, and high-frequency electronics. The failed refrigerant experiment that produced a waxy solid has generated billions of dollars in revenue across industries that did not exist when Plunkett sawed open that bottle.