Chemguide: Support for CIE A level Chemistry

This statement concerns the formation of polyamides. This is covered again as a part of statement 10.8(c).

Before you go on, you should find and read the statement in your copy of the syllabus.

This statement will only be examined in the final exam of a two year course.

You will find rather more than you need on the page about polyamides.

The only thing that you definitely don't need to worry about on this page is the manufacture of nylon-6,6. The preparation of nylon-6,6 in the lab via the nylon rope trick is just a matter of interest as well. However, although you won't be asked about the experimental details of this, you could be given the structure of two monomers similar to these and asked for the structure of the polymer as a part of statements in section 10.8.

The uses of the polymers at the bottom of the page is also just a matter of interest.

Teacher support material simplifies the starting material for nylon-6, by starting from a chain molecule rather than the cyclic caprolactam. They suggest starting from 6-aminohexanoic acid. Make sure that you can see how the nylon-6 structure is derived from this.

6-aminohexanoic acid: H₂NCH₂CH₂CH₂CH₂CH₂COOH

If you can't do this, then you haven't understood this page. Go back and look again at how water gets eliminated during the formation of nylon-6,6.

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