History of PVDF

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) began as a mid-20th-century curiosity and quickly became a workhorse. DuPont patented PVDF in 1948, but the resin’s commercial story took off in the 1960s when Pennsalt/Pennwalt scaled Kynar® PVDF, including a landmark plant in Calvert City, Kentucky. By 1965, PVDF’s first blockbuster application—Kynar 500® architectural coatings—hit the market, setting a new bar for long-term color and gloss retention on metal facades and roofing. 

A second inflection point came in 1969, when Heiji Kawai reported strong piezoelectricity in stretched, electrically poled PVDF films—launching an entire field of electroactive polymer sensors and actuators. From there, PVDF kept riding new industrial waves: corrosion-resistant process equipment, ultradurable architectural finishes and—more recently—energy and electronics, where PVDF serves as a trusted battery binder and solar panel back sheets. The through-line is reliability: a fluoropolymer tough enough for chemicals and UV, yet melt-processable enough to show up as coatings, tubing, films and even 3D-printed parts.

Building on this legacy, Nile Polymers manufactures functional PVDF products—like Strong-Ty® cable ties for chemically aggressive or cleanroom environments and Fluorinar™ PVDF filament for additive manufacturing—so engineers can prototype and deploy end-use parts without the lead times or minimums typical of traditional fluoropolymer supply chains. Nile Polymers helps labs, manufacturers and OEMs get the corrosion resistance, purity and outdoor durability Kynar® PVDF is known for—whether you need a single printed fixture or thousands of ties headed to the production line.