Recent Progress in Two-dimensional Nanomaterials Following Graphene for Improving Fire Safety of Polymer (Nano)composites

The high fire safety of polymer nanocomposites is being pursued by research institutions around the world. In addition to intrinsic flame retardancy strategy, the additive-type flame retardants have attracted increasing attention due to low commercial cost and easy fabrication craft. However, traditional additive-type flame retardants usually need high addition amount to achieve a desirable effect, which causes many side-effects on the overall performance of polymer materials, such as deteriorated mechanical property and processability. At present, two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials have also been applied to reduce the fire hazards of polymer (nano)composites with the coupling of barrier function and catalysis as well as carbonization effect. Even though most research work mainly focus on graphene-based flame retardants, more emerging two-dimensional nanomaterials are taking away research attention, due to their complementary and unique properties, mainly including hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), metal organic frameworks (MOF), carbon nitride (CN), titanium carbide (MXene) and black phosphorene (BP). In this review, except for graphene, the flame retardant mechanism involving different layered nanomaterials are also reviewed. Meanwhile, the functionalization method and flame retardancy effect of different layered nanomaterials are emphatically discussed for offering an effective reference to solve the fire hazards of polymer materials. Moreover, this work objectively evaluates the practical significance of polymer/layered nanomaterials composites for industrial application.