3D printing of fire-retardant biopolymers
Résumé
The development of biopolymers in many areas such as transportation, building and construction, electronic and electrotechnical equipment, needs to improve their durability and particularly their fire reaction, according to current standards. To face this challenge, convenient strategies of flame retardancy have to be implemented, above all to enable compatibility with emerging polymer processing techniques, such as additive manufacturing ones. Hence, this chapter presents the different mechanisms of action of the current flame retardants and the interest to achieve synergistic effects between their components. Then, the different strategies to improve fire retardancy through the use of the Fused Filament Fabrication technique (FFF) are detailed. Among the different biopolymers, only research works about the improvement of the polylactide (PLA) through the use of flame retardant systems have been reported in relation to FFF technology. In many cases, they contain biobased flame retardants such as lignin. Also, the use of nanoparticles, such as organo-modified clays is of interest. It is particularly the case for the improvement of the fire behavior of polylactide-polyamide 11 which is detailed as an original work in the last part of the chapter.