Chromis is working with industry partner SunHydrogen to develop novel membrane ionomers for water electrolysis using sunlight to produce green hydrogen.

A new study by the American Chemistry Council provides evidence that all PFAS chemistries should not be grouped together for regulatory purposes and concludes that the vast majority of commercial fluoropolymers meet criteria for polymers of low concern designation.

Chromis has eliminated the need for fluorosurfactants such as PFOA/PFOS/GenX to produce CyclAFlor^® amorphous fluoropolymers.

While amorphous fluoropolymers fall under the category of PFAS structurally, they stand out due to their distinct physical, chemical, environmental, and safety characteristics when compared to other PFAS. Amorphous fluoropolymers boast a unique set of properties and exceptional performance crucial for the products and processes they support. They play an essential role in various applications and are difficult to substitute in many cases.

Amorphous fluoropolymers have been extensively studied for their safety. They are stable under heat, resistant to biological and chemical degradation, and are insoluble in water. Moreover, they are not easily transported in the environment, do not accumulate in organisms, and are considered non-toxic. These properties align with widely accepted criteria for assessing polymer safety, classifying amorphous fluoropolymers as polymers of low concern (PLC).

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a type of chemical that scientists and regulators are concerned about. Two specific PFAS – called PFOS and PFOA – are getting a lot of attention because they’re found pretty much everywhere in the environment, including in living things like humans. These are small-molecule substances with molecular weights under 1,000 g/mol (Da).

Within PFAS, however, there’s a special category called fluoropolymers. These are large molecules with high molecular weights (generally 100,000 g/mol or more) and unique properties, including thermal, photochemical, and biological stability. They are practically insoluble in water and are so big they cannot enter cells in the body. This review suggests that fluoropolymers are different enough from other PFAS chemicals that they should be considered separately when looking at how harmful they might be. Trying to group them together with all PFAS for safety assessments isn’t really the right approach according to the scientific evidence.

Korea Institute of Science and Technology research paper on the use of CyclAFlor^® Clear as the dielectric layer in a metal-dielectric-metal Fabry-Perot etalon film

Korea Institute of Science and Technology research paper on the use of CyclAFlor^® Clear in a liquid-permeable Fabry-Perot Resonator to create an electrically-induced photonic switch to enable advanced biochemical photonic sensors with chemical selectivity, colorimetric visualization of nanostructures, and other advanced tunable photonic devices and surface-enhanced optical sensor systems

Scientists from the Sensor System Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology used a solution of PBVE homopolymer from Chromis Technologies (CyclAFlor® Clear-CF₃ dissolved in CyclaSolv® PFC180 solvent) in developing a novel sensing tool to measure how gases interact with metals at an atomic level.