What Is Polyvinylchloride?

Polyvinylchloride is the widely accepted name for poly (1-chloroethene) and, in terms of international construction, is one of the three main polymers in current use, with the other two being polyethylene and polystyrene. Polyvinylchloride has many uses such as cable insulation, packaging, and toys. Polyvinylchloride has been shown to have a head-to-tail structure. Experimental evidence of this is that when dissolved in dioxin and treated with zinc dust, it goes through a Wurtz-type reaction yielding a product that contains a slight amount of chlorine and no obvious unsaturation. The alternate possible structure, the head-to-head organization, would yield unsaturated locations where adjacent chlorine atoms had been detached (See Figure 3.1).