Citric acid is famous for giving citrus fruits their tart taste. But chemists can transform the same molecular skeleton into something with a completely different job.
React citric acid with butanol and you can make tributyl citrate, or TBC—a molecule used as a plasticizer.
Plasticizers solve a surprisingly simple problem.
Many polymers are too stiff.
Put suitable small molecules between their long polymer chains, and those chains gain more freedom to move. A hard or brittle material can become softer and more flexible.
Researchers have even used tributyl citrate to plasticize PLA, a biodegradable polymer that can otherwise be too brittle for some applications.
Global Chemical Database