Polymer science be considered polymer science in the modern sense. In the 1840s, Friedrich Ludersdorf and Nathaniel Hayward independently discovered that adding sulfur to raw natural rubber (polyisoprene) helped prevent the material from becoming sticky. In 1844 Charles Goodyear received a U.S. patent for vulcanizing natural rubber with sulfur and heat. Thomas Hancock had received a patent for the same process in the UK the year before. This process strengthened natural rubber and prevented it from melting with heat without losing flexibility. This made practical products such as waterproofed articles possible. It also facilitated practical manufacture of such rubberized materials. Vulcanized rubber
Polymer capacitor polymer e-caps in which a solid conductive polymer forms the electrolyte, this is much more difficult to achieve, because its conductivity comes by a chemical process of polymerization. However, the benefits of a solid polymer electrolyte, the significantly lower ESR of the capacitor and the low temperature dependence of the electrical parameters, in many cases justify the additional production steps as well as higher costs. Electrolytic capacitors with the charge transfer salt tetracyanoquinodimethane TCNQ as electrolyte, formerly produced by Sanyo with the trade name "OS-CON", in the true sense of the term "polymer" were not "polymer capacitors". TCNQ electrolytic capacitors