• Question: If nothing ever sticks to TEFLON, how do they make TEFLON stick to the pan?

    Asked by flick to Hermine, Katy, Laura, Nathalie, Paula on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Nathalie Pettorelli

      Nathalie Pettorelli answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/teflon.asp 😉

      Have a great day
      Nathalie

    • Photo: Katy Mee

      Katy Mee answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      You use one-sided TEFLON……

    • Photo: Laura Dixon

      Laura Dixon answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Magic! lol From what I understand, teflon doesn’t bond to anything in a chemical way (so cooked food won’t stick) but it does ‘hang on’ to objects with rough surfaces. So when they make things that need to be covered in telfon, they make the surface really rough and bumpy so the telfon gets caught on the bumps and covers the surface of the pan. Quite clever really!

    • Photo: Hermine Schnetler

      Hermine Schnetler answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      This is a very, very good and interesting question. As such the teflon doesn’t actually stick to the pan.

      The process is to sand blast the aluminium pan making it rough. We then follow this by adding a chemical bonding agent that is sticky to the pan and can bond with teflon. Teflon is the layer that is added ontop of the sticky chemical. The colour is added during this process also,teflon should come out in white apparently, after which the pan is baked at 800 celsius for 5 mins.

      Summary of process:

      Sand Blast
      Sticky chemical
      Teflon
      Bake

      So teflon does stick to something, but only people at the likes of DuPont really know how.

    • Photo: Paula Salgado

      Paula Salgado answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Tough question!

      I have to admit I had no idea… so I did a Google search (Yes, we also do that when we don’t the answer to a question) and found out a few things:

      1. Teflon, or Polytetrafluoroethene PTFE, has one of the lowest friction coefficients of any solid – that means it’s one of the least sticking materials around
      2. It’s made of long chains of carbon and fluoride, linked by very stable bonds
      3. Even if it has a very low stickiness, it still does stick – all you have to do is increase it’s ability to stick to the pan to make it work. This could be done chemically, by changing the chains slightly and increase the friction coefficient, or physically, by providing extra binding surfaces that the chains can grip onto.

      Ta make pans, they apparently use an approach based on creating more binding surfaces:
      – First they sandblast the pan to create a lot of micro-scratches on its surface or give it an acid bath to create the same effect – little grooves and imperfections where the PTFE chains can grip to.
      – Then they spray on a coat of Teflon primer. This primer, like most primers, is thin, enabling it to flow into the the micro-scratches.
      – The primed surface is then baked at high heat, causing the Teflon to solidify and get a reasonably secure mechanical grip.
      – Finally, they spray on a finish coat and bake that. The Teflon finish coat will stick to the Teflon primer coat just fine.

      Hope that explains it – I certainly learned something with that question, thanks! 😉

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