Synthetic polymers are widely used in household appliances, cables, wires, electric devices, transportation, construction materials, etc. However, in air condition most polymers are flammable and easy to burn under a relatively high temperature or in the presence of open fire. In many cases, improving flame retardancy of polymers is very important to reduce potential fire risks. Flame retardant materials are extremely important additives in a wide variety of polymeric materials. In decades, versatile phosphorus-containing compounds have been widely used as flame retardants for polymers due to their high efficiency and low toxicity. Moreover,organophosphorus flame retardants have the effect of plasticizing, which can improve flexibility and mechanical strength of polymer materials in the forming process. Thus, to develop late-model organophosphorus flame retardant still is the hot research in current polymer science.
Chirality is one of the basic attributes of nature. In the field of material science, using optically pure chiral compounds to study the distinctive properties and functions that compared with the corresponding racemic compounds is still in the embryonic stage but develop rapidly. However, to date, systematically utilize optically pure chiral compounds as flame retardant materials and explore the chirality-flame retardancy relationship between the (R)-enantiomer and (S)-enantiomer of chiral flame retardants have not been reported.
The main objective of this innovative work is to use optically pure chiral compounds as flame retardants to develop new generation flame retardant polymer composites. In this project, we designed and synthesized a series of chiral phosphorus-containing compounds as flame retardants for epoxy resin, especially to understand the chirality effect towards flame retardancy between the (R)-enantiomer and (S)-enantiomer of chiral flame retardant. This study will give more insights on developing new generation flame retardants.
