Recent developments in phosphorus based flame retardant coatings for textiles: Synthesis, applications and performance

Textiles contain a high content of carbon and hydrogen in their structure which provides the fuel for combustion and therefore are hazardous in case of a fire accident. A suitable flame retardant (FR) treatment for textiles is a common practice for their fire safe applications. Although plenty of well-known effective FR systems are already known for textile applications, there is a need to develop new effective environmental friendly FR agents and their treatments to meet existing environmental and technical requirements. Thus, development of phosphorus based new flame retardant compounds for application in textile treatments has been a major focus in academia and industry. This review summarizes the recent reports (last 5 years) on the preparation of phosphorus based FR compounds and their application on various natural and synthetic textiles via coating methodology. The reported literature typically addresses improvement of FR efficiency by synergistic interaction of phosphorus with other environmentally acceptable flame retardant elements such as nitrogen, silicon, sulfur and boron and is thus addressed in detail in this review.