Abstract
The development of eco-friendly flame retardants is crucial due to the hazardous properties of most conventional flame retardants. Herein, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is reported to be a highly efficient "all-in-one" green flame retardant as it consists of three essential groups, which lead to the formation of char with extreme intumescence, namely, three phosphate groups, providing an acid source; one ribose sugar, working as a char source; and one adenine, acting as a blowing agent. Polyurethane foam was used as a model flammable material to demonstrate the exceptional flame retardancy of ATP. The direct flammability tests have clearly shown that the ATP-coated polyurethane (PU) foam almost did not burn upon exposure to the torch flame. Importantly, ATP exhibits an extreme volume increase, whereas general phosphorus-based flame retardants show a negligible increase in volume. The PU foam coated with 30 wt % of ATP (PU-ATP 30 wt %) exhibits a significant reduction in the peak heat release rate (94.3%) with a significant increase in the ignition time, compared to bare PU. In addition, PU-ATP 30 wt % exhibits a high limiting oxygen index (LOI) value of 31% and HF-1 rating in the UL94 horizontal burning foamed material test. Additionally, we demonstrated that ATP's flame retardancy is sufficient for other types of matrices such as cotton, as confirmed from the results of the standardized ASTM D6413 test; cotton-ATP 30 wt % exhibits an LOI value of 32% and passes the vertical flame test. These results strongly suggest that ATP has great potential to be used as an "all-in-one" green flame retardant.
Highlights
The International Association of Fire and Rescue Services (CTIF) recently reported that, during the period from 1993− 2017, 27−57 countries, including the United States, suffered from 2.5−4.5 million fires, resulting in 17,000−62,000 deaths.[1]
To confirm the flammability of the samples, miniaturized PU foam specimens with a volume of 50 × 50 × 20 mm[3], which is a quarter of the ASTM E1354 standard, were used
Before microanalysis of PU-adenosine triphosphate (ATP), we carried out the tensile strength test according to ISO 1798:2008 to confirm whether 30 wt % of the ATP coating affects the mechanical strength of PU foam
Summary
The International Association of Fire and Rescue Services (CTIF) recently reported that, during the period from 1993− 2017, 27−57 countries, including the United States, suffered from 2.5−4.5 million fires, resulting in 17,000−62,000 deaths.[1]. Significantly increasing the amount of P-FRs deteriorates polymer processability and negatively affects the mechanical strength and durability of polymer composites, including PU foams.[7] multicomponent systems containing phosphorus with diverse moieties (P−Si, P−O, P−N, etc.) have been actively investigated to reduce the amount of P-FR loading in the polymer composites.[8−12] As they are derived from natural sources and possess excellent recycling capability and biodegradability, some phosphorylated biomacromolecules, such as proteins, caseins, and deoxyribonucleic acid, have received increasing attention as “green FRs”.13−16 In particular, can these biomacromolecules be applied to poly(ethylene terephthalate) fabrics,[17] cotton,[18] and polymer foams,[19] using impregnation or layer-by-layer techniques,[20] but they can release phosphoric acid at lower temperatures (160−200 °C), resulting in the formation of stable protective char with high flame retardancy.[21,22] biomacromolecules are typically expensive to be used on a large scale. By verifying the flame retardancy by coating cotton with ATP, we confirmed the possibility of using ATP as a FR for various materials
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