Citation

Chang TH, Tian Y, Wee DLY, Ren H, Chen PY. Small 2018; 14(21): e1800596.

Affiliation

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117585, Singapore.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/smll.201800596

PMID

29682898

Abstract

Flame-retardant coatings are widely used in a variety of personnel or product protection, and many applications would benefit from film stretchability if suitable materials are available. It is challenging to develop flame-retardant coatings that are stretchable, eco-friendly, and capable of being integrated on mechanically dynamic devices. Here, a concept is reported that uses pretextured montmorillonite (MMT) hybrid nanocoatings that can undergo programed unfolding to mimic the stretchability of elastomeric materials. These textured MMT coatings can be transferred onto an elastomeric substrate to achieve an MMT/elastomer bilayer device with high stretchability (225% areal strain) and effective flame retardancy. The bilayer composite is utilized as flame-retardant skin for a soft robotic gripper, and it is demonstrated that the actuated response can manipulate and rescue irregularly shaped objects from a fire scene. Furthermore, by depositing the conformal MMT nanocoatings on nitrile gloves, the firefree gloves can endure direct flame contact without ignition.

© 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Language: en

Keywords

crumpled and wrinkled textures; flame retardancy; mechanical stretchability; montmorillonite nanostructures; soft robotics