An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
For more than a decade potential environmental problems associated with organo-bromine flame retardant systems have motivated the search for non-halogen based approaches to reducing polymer flammability. Initially, research focused on development of new phosphorus based flame retardants, and numerous publications and patents have been issued in this area.1-8 Similarly motivated research has also produced non-halogen flame retardant approaches based on other elements, such as boron,9 and silicon.10 At the same time this work was ongoing research on the use of additives, or fillers, with nanometer scale primary particle sizes produced, what are referred to today as polymer nanocomposites. These materials exhibit enhancement in a variety of physical properties at one tenth the loading required when micron size additives are used.11 Activity at the intersection of these two fields has produced a new class of flame retardants based on nanocomposites.