Zipperling Kessler (ZKC), the privately financed holding of Ormecon Chemie, Ammersbek, Germany, has closed a license contract with the Bayer AG, Leverkusen, Germany, by the end of March 2001. With this, ZKC grants a license to produce certain dispersions and polymer blends (mixtures) with conductive polymers to the chemicals group.

With BAYTRON^® Bayer AG has developed an electrically conductive polymer with the chemical short-term PEDT, which has been proven a success in numerous applications. Its technical properties excel by high conductivity, transparency, stability and easy processing. BAYTRON^® can be processed very simple and environmentally friendly as an aqueous dispersion, which is available under the trademark BAYTRON^® P.

With closing the license agreement there are no more patents owned by Zipperling Kessler & Co blocking Bayer’s and their customer’s activities with PEDT (BAYTRON^®). Bayer has furthermore acquired the option to exploit further applications for BAYTRON^®.

Zipperling Kessler has been active in R&D for more than 20 years and owns a wide range of patents in the field of manufacturing and dispersing conductive polymers, including mixtures of conductive and non-conductive polymers, which are essentially relevant for the practical use of this new materials class.

1996 Zipperling founded the 100% subsidiary company Ormecon Chemie, that pursues further research and development and the market introduction of Polyaniline (short: PANI) based on Zipperling’s technology. The polymer developed by Ormecon is in so far specific as it is a real metal: the electrons move in a metallic way. It is therefore named an „Organic Metal". PANI (ORMECON^®) and PEDT (BAYTRON^®) are totally different materials with different properties and have been independently developed by Zipperling/Ormecon Chemie resp. Bayer AG.

Besides the market introduction of own products, Ormecon is also involved in a wide range of different R&D projects mainly ordered by their licensees. Licensees of Ormecon besides Bayer AG, which has only recently been added to the list, are the US-group DuPont, the former Hoechst subsidiary COVION Semiconductors and the Finnish company Panipol, with the shareholder Fortum (former Neste Chemicals).

Conductive polymers like PEDT and the Organic Metal PANI are increasingly used in e.g. printed circuit board manufacturing processes, corrosion protection applications, antistatic equipping of polymers or in the expected up-coming application of organic light emitting diodes.

Ammersbek, 30.03. 2001                                      

Ormecon Chemie GmbH & Co. KG

Dr. Bernhard Wessling                                                                                                                                


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