Fire Intumescent, High-Temperature Resistant, Mechanically Flexible Graphene Oxide Network for Exceptional Fire Shielding and Ultra-Fast Fire Warning

Smart fire alarm sensor (FAS) materials with mechanically robust, excellent flame retardancy as well as ultra-sensitive temperature-responsive capability are highly attractive platforms for fire safety application. However, most reported FAS materials can hardly provide sensitive, continuous and reliable alarm signal output due to their undesirable temperature-responsive, flame-resistant and mechanical performances. To overcome these hurdles, herein, we utilize the multi-amino molecule, named HCPA, that can serve as triple-roles including cross-linker, fire retardant and reducing agent for decorating graphene oxide (GO) sheets and obtaining the GO/HCPA hybrid networks. Benefiting from the formation of multi-interactions in hybrid network, the optimized GO/HCPA network exhibits significant increment in mechanical strength, e.g., tensile strength and toughness increase of similar to 2.3 and similar to 5.7 times, respectively, compared to the control one. More importantly, based on P and N doping and promoting thermal reduction effect on GO network, the excellent flame retardancy (withstanding similar to 1200 degrees C flame attack), ultra-fast fire alarm response time (similar to 0.6 s) and ultra-long alarming period (> 600 s) are obtained, representing the best comprehensive performance of GO-based FAS counterparts. Furthermore, based on GO/HCPA network, the fireproof coating is constructed and applied in polymer foam and exhibited exceptional fire shielding performance. This work provides a new idea for designing and fabricating desirable FAS materials and fireproof coatings.

Automated summary

In this study, a smart fire alarm sensor (FAS) material with mechanically robust, excellent flame retardancy, and ultra-sensitive temperature-responsive capability was developed. By decorating graphene oxide (GO) sheets with a multi-amino molecule, the optimized GO/HCPA hybrid network exhibited significant improvement in mechanical strength and comprehensive fire safety performance. Furthermore, a fireproof coating based on the GO/HCPA network showed exceptional fire shielding performance when applied in polymer foam.