Flame-retardant carbon nanotube films

The European Research Council (Grant Agreement - 259061). National Science Center, Poland (Grant Agreement - UMO-2015/19/P/ST5/03799). The European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement - 665778).

We have demonstrated fire-retardancy properties of a polymer matrix-free CNT film for the first time. As compared with classical fire-retardant materials such as Kevlar, Twaron or Nomex, the CNT film showed a spectrum of advantages. The material is lightweight, flexible and well-adherent to even the most complicated shapes. The results have showed that by using CNTs for fire-retardancy we can extend the operational time almost two-fold, what makes CNTs a much better protection than the solutions employed nowadays. We believe that among other great properties of CNT, their macroscopic assemblies such as CNT films show significant potential for becoming a fire protective coating, which exhibits high performance in not sustaining fire.