Fire warning sensing materials: advances, prospects, and challenges

Fire incidents have surged in frequency in recent years, causing considerable harm to human life and the ecological environment. Consequently, researchers are focused on developing a variety of fire-warning materials. Intelligent fire-warning sensor materials demonstrate the capability to detect early signs of combustion, including characteristics such as temperature and smoke. These materials facilitate proactive alarm systems, thereby enhancing safety in fire prevention and management. Compared to traditional fire-alarm systems, these detectors demonstrate rapid and sensitive responses to fire, notably enhancing warning efficiency. This review elucidates the warning mechanisms of various fire-warning sensor materials, such as externally powered fire-warning materials based on electrical signal sensing, self-powered type, phase change/deformation, and color change observation, focusing on both self-powered and externally powered mechanisms. Furthermore, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the research and applications of these materials in fire-warning systems. Ultimately, we identified the primary challenges that this field faces and proposed potential solutions: a need existed to explore multifaceted mechanisms and integrate features such as corrosion resistance and self-healing properties to achieve multifunctionality in fire-warning systems. In addition, coupling intelligent technologies to enhance fire-warning capabilities and enable extensive real-world applications ultimately presents a forward-looking perspective on the future development of these fire-warning systems.