50 Years of Makrolon®

A timeless invention

It was fifty years ago that Bayer developed a plastic that has since become one of the most versatile and successful thermoplastics of its kind: Makrolon®.

As an all-round talent it has found its way into many spheres of everyday life and is now heading towards an exciting future with a variety of new applications.

Some inventions point to the future, and the discovery made by Bayer chemist Dr. Hermann Schnell 50 years ago was certainly one of them. He used bisphenol A, the condensation product of phenol and acetone that had been known for some time, together with phosgene to produce a polycarbonic acid ester that displayed unexpectedly good properties as a plastic. Schnell’s invention was patented on October 17, 1953 and later went into production, initially in the form of very thin, but extremely tear-resistant Makrofol® film, which, among other things, was used by Agfa to manufacture photographic films.

Five years later, the new plastic, now known as Makrolon®, proceeded to take the world by storm like no product had before. This was not surprising, because the Bayer material is characterized by properties that only a high-grade polycarbonate can offer: Makrolon® is virtually unbreakable, light and impact-resistant, even at extremely low temperatures; it is easily molded, but displays exemplary heat resistance. Most important of all, Makrolon® is as clear and transparent as glass.

Its wide range of properties enabled the Bayer polycarbonate to find applications in numerous spheres of everyday life. In the 1960s and 1970s alone, Bayer steadily expanded the Makrolon® product range to over sixty grades and more than 500 color shades.