A useful aspect of specialty chemicals is that they can be custom designed to meet the specifications of a particular product or process. The important thing to understand is that every chemical is made up of molecules that are in turn made up of different combinations of atomic elements. Each element has its own special set of chemical and physical properties, and depending on the combination of elements that are used, the chemical substance will have certain chemical and physical properties of its own.

These chemical properties are, overall, dependent on one hugely important factor: the number of electrons that a single atom of a single element is made up of. Amazingly enough, for example, the sole basic difference between elemental oxygen and elemental carbon is that an atom of oxygen has eight electrons, while an atom of carbon has six. This basic difference means that each element has entirely different physical and chemical properties. This might seem like a rather long-winded explanation, but it’s important for understanding how a chemist can design various types of specialty chemicals, because the ways in which various different elements react is also determined largely by the number of electrons an atom of each element contains.

Another important concept is that an atom of any element has a series of layers of electrons, called shells, and with the exception of the innermost shell, each can hold up to eight electrons. An atom that doesn’t have a filled outer shell will form chemical bonds with other atoms, if it can, to fill that outer shell. An atom of elemental fluorine, for example, has a total of nine electrons, and has an outer shell that is ‘missing’ one electron. It’s this atomic structure that makes fluorine a highly reactive element when it’s present in its pure form. You could say that fluorine ‘wants’ to react with other chemicals so badly that it will react with almost anything in its efforts to fill up that outer shell. This makes fluorine-and other halogen gases-quite important in the production of certain specialty chemicals. These halogen gases form compounds that are highly stable, because of their special atomic structure.

This made seem like an incredibly complicated business to an ‘outsider’ who isn’t familiar with chemical processes. To the chemists who design and produce specialty chemicals, it’s second nature. Chemists have the background knowledge-the understanding of all the different properties of each element-that allows them to design specialty chemicals that have the desired properties. With knowledge of the different chemical and physical properties of elements and molecules, specialty chemists can design and produce chemicals that are inert and non-reactive at high temperatures, chemicals that repel water or dirt, that are used as lubricants, or as pharmaceutical drugs. The key is that the designer understands how to combine elements and chemicals to come up with a finished product with the chemical and physical properties that are needed.