Moving beyond PFAS surfactants: Addressing uncertainty in fluorinated thermoplastics through mechanics, rheology, and data science

Fluoropolymers are ubiquitous in most of our day-to-day life. Fluoropolymers are present in many critical application spaces, from food processing to batteries to PCBs and many more. In recent years, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have garnered significant attention due to their persistent nature, environmental contamination, and potential health risks. Global regulations are increasingly focusing on mitigating these challenges. Several applications heavily reliant on PFAS, such as certain firefighting foams, non-stick coatings, and water-repellent textiles, face impending restrictions or bans. To address this, there is a pressing need to identify more environmentally friendly synthetic routes for fluoropolymer synthesis and employ advanced characterization and analysis techniques to compare new fluoropolymers with legacy PFAS-produced fluoropolymers. Characterizing fluoropolymers poses unique challenges due to their poor compatibility with gel permeation chromatography (GPC). Mechanical testing and melt rheology provide molecular insights, which can inform viscoelastic behavior. This talk will overview how mechanics, melt rheology, and clustering methods can assess multi-dimensional similarity across fluoropolymer systems synthesized with and without PFAS surfactants.