Boron-doped copper phenylphosphate as temperature-response nanosheets to fabricate high fire-safety polycarbonate nanocomposites

The application of polymer materials has provided the convenience and also bring fire risk and hazard due to intrinsic flammable property of polymers. Here we demonstrate a novel strategy using boron-doped copper phenylphosphate (BCuPP) nanosheets with temperature-response characteristics as only flame retardant for creating high fire-safety polycarbonate (PC) nanocomposites with excellent comprehensive performances. PC/BCuPP nanocomposites presents a good mechanical performance at room temperature due to the strong interfacial interaction between PC matrix and BCuPP nanosheets. Furthermore, BCuPP exhibits unique temperature-response behavior driven by fire, where fully molten boron oxide flows freely, followed by in-situ formed BPO 4 to repair the defects to form a complete and continuous protective layer. So the temperature-response behavior endows PC/BCuPP nanocomposites excellent fire-safety performance with dramatical decrease in both heat release rate and total smoke production. This study offers a novel route only incorporating nanoparticles as flame retardant to create high fire-safety polymer nanocomposites.