TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - Thermally insulating and fire-retardant lightweight anisotropic foams based on nanocellulose and graphene oxide
JO  - Nature nanotechnology
A1  - Wicklein, Bernd
A1  - Kocjan, Andraž
A1  - Salazar-Alvarez, German
A1  - Carosio, Federico
A1  - Camino, Giovanni
A1  - Antonietti, Markus
A1  - Bergström, Lennart
SP  - 277
EP  - 283
VL  - 10
IS  - 3
N2  - High-performance thermally insulating materials from renewable resources are needed to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Traditional fossil-fuel-derived insulation materials such as expanded polystyrene and polyurethane have thermal conductivities that are too high for retrofitting or for building new, surface-efficient passive houses. Tailored materials such as aerogels and vacuum insulating panels are fragile and susceptible to perforation. Here, we show that freeze-casting suspensions of cellulose nanofibres, graphene oxide and sepiolite nanorods produces super-insulating, fire-retardant and strong anisotropic foams that perform better than traditional polymer-based insulating materials. The foams are ultralight, show excellent combustion resistance and exhibit a thermal conductivity of 15 mW m(-1) K(-1), which is about half that of expanded polystyrene. At 30 °C and 85% relative humidity, the foams retained more than half of their initial strength. Our results show that nanoscale engineering is a promising strategy for producing foams with excellent properties using cellulose and other renewable nanosized fibrous materials.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1748-3387
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.248
ID  - ref1
ER  -