Facile and green synthesis of mechanically flexible and flame-retardant clay/graphene oxide nanoribbon interconnected networks for fire safety and prevention

By Zhi-Ran Yu, Min Mao, Shi-Neng Li, Qiao Xia, Cheng-Fei Cao, Li Zhao, Guo-Dong Zhang, Zhanjiang Zheng, Jie-feng Gao, Longcheng Tang. 2021

163 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Water-based hybrid graphene oxide nanoribbon (GONR)/montmorillonite (MMT)/polyethylene glycol (PEG) networks were prepared by using a facile bio-inspired low-temperature evaporation induced assembling process. Multiple non-covalent and covalent interactions together with a high orientation level of MMT were constructed in the hybrid PEG/MMT/GONR networks. As a result, the hybrid networks exhibit synergistic reinforcing and toughening efficiencies when compared with the composites modified with the single-phase filler, e.g. 152% and 167% increase in tensile strength for the optimized ternary composites in comparison with those of the binary composites. Moreover, the nacre-like hybrid networks show excellent flame resistance and structural stability in a flame due to the formation of interconnected and compact char after combustion, which can be applied as protective coatings to combustible materials. The hybrid coatings not only improve the flame-retardant property (e.g. ~46% decrease in heat release rate at 30 wt%) of the combustible PU foam materials significantly, but also provide ideal fire alarm responses (e.g. rapid flame detection of ~2 s and effective fire early warning signals in pre-combustion). Owing to the green and versatile synthesis scheme, excellent mechanical performance and flame resistance, these hybrid PEG/MMT/GONR networks are promising widespread application.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9ba319a2d7716562a35364b077c4f8304b4c1891