Frederick Kenneth McTaggart

Frederick Kenneth McTaggart (30 November 1917 – 24 March 2004) was an Australian inorganic chemist who led pioneering research in microwave chemistry and gas plasma reactions – the production and use of ionised gas –and its applications in electronics, thermal coatings, treatment of polymers, and plasma metallurgy.

McTaggart invented and patented for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation means of incorporating heat-resistant properties in paint, and novel apparatuses for the production of metals from halides using plasma jets or microwaves, and published in the field.

Though his birth was not registered until 1918, Frederick Kenneth McTaggart (known as Ken) was born on 30 November 1917 at Elsternwick, to Victorian Railways industrial chemist Cyril (1881 – 1966), and teacher Hilda Theresa McTaggart (née Daniel, 1882 – 1966), and his sole sibling was an older sister, Jean.

Due to childhood illness his primary education started late; aged eight he entered Grade 4 at Ormond State School, then he was educated from age 13 at Melbourne Boys High School 1931–1936.

He joined a school debating team, and the orchestra, of which he was leader in 1934, and was elected a prefect in 1935.

He was a ham radio enthusiast, and in his 3rd year at the school was involved in the Wireless Club, of which he became vice-president, and built his own set, the 'MHS Twin', when in 1934 he was issued an Amateur Radio Licence,.

It was an interest that he continued into adulthood and one he maintained throughout his life.

Aged 18 he commenced a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at Melbourne University and in April 1939 was conferred Bachelor of Science in Wilson Hall, when he had already commenced a Master of Science with John Stuart Anderson working on the separation of hydrogen fluoride and zirconium for which he received 1st Class Honours in 1940.

In November 1940 McTaggart worked at Carbide Works at Electrona in Tasmania until mid-1941, then returned to Melbourne to live at 4 Kenilworth Gve.

Glen Iris.

In 1942, on the recommendation of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (from 1949 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO), McTaggart was made its employee, working at first in facilities at Melbourne University then from later that year at Fishermans Bend when a new facility was opened there.

His initial investigation was the chlorination of rutile found in Australian heavy beach sands which produced titanium tetrachloride; its importance in World War II then underway, was the dense white fume it produced on exposure to moist air, making it an effective smoke screen.

Described as "one of the more imaginative members" of the Organisation, McTaggart continued mineral chlorination studies and early in 1944, Ian Kraitzer joined the research group in what was to become the Minerals Utilization Section of the future CSIR Division of Industrial Chemistry (created 1959), and then by a young recruit, Isabel Joy Bear as a Junior Laboratory Assistant, and later by Charles Alsope, together seeking new uses for titanium tetrachloride.

In the alkoxides of titanium, in particular the properties of polymerised butyl titanate, they discovered an excellent vehicle for heat-resisting paint pigments; it was a use of titanium esters that was patented by CSIR, a project in which the Defence laboratories joined Kraitzer and McTaggart 's laboratory tests with paint formulation studies by Defence laboratories' George Winter (who later joined the Division of Mineral Chemistry).

McTaggart and Jean Lehmann married in 1944.

McTaggart's research in his position as Senior Principal Research Scientist headed a team including (in 1946) Ian Kraitzer, Chas Alsope, Margaret Ellis, Mick Bertrand and Joy Bear; and staff qualified in electronics; Keith Perger, appointed in 1962, replaced in 1968 by John A. Hamilton; and in glassblowing; in Port Melbourne Rudi Pillig transferred to the project from the Division of Chemical Physics, before which scientists including McTaggart and Newnham in the Minerals Utilization Section were themselves skilled glassblowers, and produced their own apparatus in glass or silica.

Given an increasing wartime shortage of tin, his team also commenced investigations into the production of titanium tetrachloride from local resources as an alternative material to replace stannic (tin) chloride in a number of applications.

Previously prepared overseas by chlorinating titanium white pigment (titanium dioxide), McTaggart's work demonstrated that the potential expense of proposals to import titanium white could be avoided through development of his process in which rutile sand, briquetted with coal or charcoal, was chlorinated directly.

At first operated on a pilot-plant scale with Australian rutile sand replacing titanium pigment, the process was adopted for large-scale manufacture.

After the war in 1947 and during a period of residency in Europe and the USA he worked with H J Emeléus in the chemistry labs in Cambridge,

In 1947 the couple departed Australia on the Stratheden, and from September lived in Mt. Pleasant Rd., Cambridge while McTaggart worked with inorganic chemist Harry Julius Emeléus' laboratory in Downing Street.

He resumed his amateur radio operation with callsign G3CUA.

In 1948 he worked in Paris with Yvette Cauchois on a study concerning differences in the x-ray absorption of the elements zirconium and hafnium which they published in the Comptes Rendues of the French Academy of Science When the need arose to separate the two metals for use in atomic reactors, their basic study contributed to further CSIRO investigations to devise an effective method.

While in Europe McTaggart visited Brussels, Eindhoven, Oslo and Porsgrunn before spending three months from September in the US, then in January 1949 returned to Australia from Vancouver on the Aorangi, to continue work at CSIRO while living in Box Hill.

Daughter Jennifer was born 8 August 1950 and in December McTaggart left CSIRO, sailing with his family on the Himalaya for employment in the UK with the British company, Laporte Industries in Luton where his work found commercial potential, and during which time he made further trips, by car, through Europe before rejoining CSIRO at the end of 1952.

During the 1950s McTaggart made an extensive investigation of the sulfides, selenides and tellurides (collectively known as chalcogenides) of titanium, zirconium, hafnium and thorium.

The study synthesised and examined some fifty different compounds, collecting data on them which was published in Australian Journal of Chemistry in 1958, and investigated their preparation and the characteristics of their chemical, electrical and lubrication properties, resulting in a process for producing titanium sulfide-based dry lubricants for high temperatures which was patented.

Pioneering studies in microwave chemistry and gas plasma reactions led from this work into the electrical resistance and conduction of the sulphides, selenides, and tellurides, supported by his development of novel experimental apparatuses.

Rather than use the glow discharge generated between two electrodes to produce a plasma reaction as Newnham and Watts had done, in the late 50s McTaggart drew on technology derived from the wartime electronics of radar capable of frequencies in the microwave region of the radio spectrum to create discharges without using electrodes.

He induced the plasma with these charges into the gas through coils wound around the reaction vessel, thus avoiding contamination by metal from electrodes.

In his monograph, McTaggart sums up the achievement: "Instead of an arc between electrodes, a radio-frequency field may be used to maintain the plasma."

This approach, using high frequency discharges led to the discovery of new chemical reactions in low pressure plasmas, verified by a mass spectrometer built in the Division to identify the active species involved in the reactions.

Research continued along two main avenues; low pressure, athermal plasmas, with high electron energies producing neutral atoms, ions, etc., at ambient or low temperature, with applications in the areas of pure research, chemical analysis, surface preparation, and thin film production; and atmospheric or high pressure plasmas, previously achieved with electrodes producing a plasma 'jet' or 'torch', and used in parallel to McTaggart's microwave technique, for the production of high temperature, which best suited the interests of the Division in minerals.

After McTaggart presented an account of their findings in Paris and London, industrial firms in England and the USA were soon marketing the new paint, and its heat-resistance was still attracting attention as late as 1962, though with no acknowledgment of the Australian contribution.

McTaggart spent four months in 1962 on a working tour through the US, Buenos Aires and England.

In 1963 he assembled and presented his papers for an honorary doctorate, which was granted in 1965, during which year he again traveled in Europe and presented in Belgrade at the VIIth International Conference on Phenomena in Ionized Gases, and commenced his monograph on plasma chemistry which he completed the following year.

A Doctor of Science was conferred on him in 1965 by Melbourne University in recognition of his work on the chemistry of titanium and zirconium, and on reactions in low pressure discharges.

In April 1967, he was invited by the United States Air Force to the American Chemical Society Conference at Miami, Florida, then addressed the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy Conference in London.

In September the English edition of his monograph was published.

On the basis of his work in plasma chemistry, during July and August 1971, McTaggart was sponsored for a tour of the United States by its Office of Naval Research, to be flown by the US Airforce to the NASA-Ames Base to participate in a seminar on plasma chemistry.