Mixture of Graphene Oxide/Phosphoric Acid/Melamine as Coating for Improved Fire Protective Performance and Enhancement of Surface Electrical Properties on Wood Chipboard

Abstract

Looking for multifunctional materials, an assessment of the performances both as fire retardant and generator of electrically conductive surfaces for a three component mixture of graphene oxide, phosphoric acid and melamine applied on wood chipboard was performed. A simple approach was used to investigate the intumescent char formation and quantify the loss mass during vertical burning tests, in which the prepared samples were exposed for a certain time interval to a flame generated by an ethanol lamp in ambient conditions. Moreover, mass loss evolution and structural changes that occur during the burning process were more comprehensive investigated by differential thermal and thermogravimetric (DTA/TGA) techniques. By comparing the performances between the wood chipboard samples without any coverage and those covered with one or multiple component mixture, an increase of protection against the fire action was noticed when the three component mixture was used. Also, an improvement of the electrical properties was observed, after flame exposure of the samples covered with multiple layers (i.e., two and three), when the three component mixture was used. Morphological and structural investigations by microscopy (optical and electronic-SEMEDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and spectral (Raman, FTIR) methods are described. An assessment of market potential is also discussed.