chlorotrifluoroethylene, flammable, colourless gas that belongs to the family of organic halogen compounds, used in the manufacture of a series of synthetic oils, greases, waxes, elastomers, and plastics that are unusually resistant to attack by chemicals and heat. These products are polymers; that is, they are composed of very large molecules built up by combination of hundreds or thousands of smaller molecules, which may be all alike or of two or more different compounds.
Polymers were first prepared from chlorotrifluoroethylene in Germany in 1937 and were developed to a useful stage in the United States in the 1940s, when materials resistant to chemical corrosion were needed in the atomic-bomb project. Chlorotrifluoroethylene is produced from tetrachloroethylene by first converting it into trichlorotrifluoroethane, which is then caused to react with either zinc or hydrogen. Chlorotrifluoroethylene, which liquefies upon cooling to -28° C (-18° F), has low toxicity but must be protected from oxygen, which reacts rapidly with it. The polymers it forms, alone or with numerous other compounds, have been commercialized under the trade name Kel-F.