Original Article
  • High Flame Retardancy and High-strength of Polymer Composites with Synergistically Reinforced MOSw and EG
  • Chowon Kim*, Jinwoo Lee*, Hyejeong Yoon*, Jonghwan Suhr*, **†

  • * Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University
    ** Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University

  • This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Polymers are inherently vulnerable to flame, which limits their application to various high-tech industries. In addition, environmental regulations restrict the use of halogen-based flame retardants which has best flame-retardant effect. There are inorganic flame retardants and phosphorous flame retardants as representative non-halogen-based flame retardants. However, high content of flame retardants is required to impart high flame retardancy of the polymers, and this leads to a decrease in mechanical properties. In this research, a new approach for inorganic flame retardant-based polymer composites with high mechanical properties and flame retardancy was suggested. Inorganic flame retardants called as magnesium oxysulfate whisker (MOSw) were used in this research. MOSw can extinguish fire by releasing water and non-combustible gases when exposed to flame. In addition, they have reinforcing effect when added into the polymer with its high aspect ratio. Expandable graphite (EG) was used as a flame-retardant supplement by helping to form a more dense char layer. Through this research, it is expected that it can be applied to various industries requiring flame retardancy such as automobile, and architecture by replacing halogen-based flame polymer composites


Keywords: Flame retardant composites, Magnesium oxysulfate whisker, Expandable graphite

This Article

Correspondence to

  • Jonghwan Suhr
  • * Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University
    ** Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University

  • E-mail: suhr@skku.edu