Synergistic fire safety effect between nano-CuO and ammonium polyphosphate in thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer

This article mainly studied the synergistic fire safety effect between nano-CuO and ammonium polyphosphate (APP) in thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer (TPU). The TPU composites were prepared by molten blending method. And the fire safety of all TPU composites was investigated by LOI test, cone calorimeter test (CCT), microscale combustion colorimeter (MCC) and smoke density test (SDT), respectively. The LOI test showed that nano-CuO could further improve the flame retardancy of TPU. The CCT results showed that there was a remarkably synergistic fire safety effect between APP and nano-CuO in TPU. Remarkably, the total heat release and total smoke release for the sample with 0.5 mass% content of nano-CuO decreased by at least 13.0 and 51.1% compared with the sample containing only APP, respectively. And the residual carbon mass of the samples containing nano-CuO was more than that of the sample with only APP at the end of the test. The MCC results showed that the HRR values of the samples containing nano-CuO were further lower than that of the sample containing APP. The SDT results showed that the luminous flux values of the samples containing nano-CuO were higher than that of the sample with only APP irrespective of with flame or without flame, which indicated that there was an apparently synergistic effect of smoke suppression between APP and nano-CuO in TPU. Through the analysis of the results of this experiment, it will make a great influence on the study of the nanomaterials in the aspect of fire safety of polymer.