Fire Intumescent, High-Temperature Resistant, Mechanically Flexible Graphene Oxide Network for Exceptional Fire Shielding and Ultra-Fast Fire Warning

Abstract Smart fire alarm sensor (FAS) materials with mechanically robust, excellent flame retardancy as well as ultra-sensitive temperature-responsive capability are highly attractive platforms for fire safety application. However, most reported FAS materials can hardly provide sensitive, continuous and reliable alarm signal output due to their undesirable temperature-responsive, flame-resistant and mechanical performances. To overcome these hurdles, herein, we utilize the multi-amino molecule, named HCPA, that can serve as triple-roles including cross-linker, fire retardant and reducing agent for decorating graphene oxide (GO) sheets and obtaining the GO/HCPA hybrid networks. Benefiting from the formation of multi-interactions in hybrid network, the optimized GO/HCPA network exhibits significant increment in mechanical strength, e.g., tensile strength and toughness increase of ~ 2.3 and ~ 5.7 times, respectively, compared to the control one. More importantly, based on P and N doping and promoting thermal reduction effect on GO network, the excellent flame retardancy (withstanding ~ 1200 °C flame attack), ultra-fast fire alarm response time (~ 0.6 s) and ultra-long alarming period (> 600 s) are obtained, representing the best comprehensive performance of GO-based FAS counterparts. Furthermore, based on GO/HCPA network, the fireproof coating is constructed and applied in polymer foam and exhibited exceptional fire shielding performance. This work provides a new idea for designing and fabricating desirable FAS materials and fireproof coatings.