Large-Scale Polyimide-Based Flame Retardant E-Textile For Fire Damage Warning in Firefighting Clothing

Abstract

Firefighting clothing are an essential equipment for personal protection of firefighters, protecting them from various heat hazards in fire. However, once the firefighting clothing is burned, the life safety of firefighters will be seriously threatened. Therefore, it is of great significance to study outer materials of firefighting clothing with the function of flame retardance and fire damage response. Here, a novel microfluidic dip-coating method has been proposed to achieve coaxial sandwich structure polyimide (PI) based yarns with combustion response performance. Graphene oxide (GO) is applied as the middle layer to perform the function of combustion response, and the intrinsically flame-retardant sodium alginate (SA) is designed as the outermost layer to solve the brittleness of GO coating. The obtained GO/SA@PI yarns have good combustion response, high sensitivity (response time of about 1 s) and long warning duration (120 s). This manuscript put forward new path to solves the problem that thermal resistance response sensors (e.g. GO) are mostly flaky or blocky with poor flexibility and strength, which cannot be simply woven into firefighting clothing.

Keywords: Graphene oxide, microfluidic dip-coating, Sodium alginate, combustion response, firefighting clothing