TY - JOUR A1 - Schartel, Bernhard A1 - Beck, Uwe A1 - Bahr, Horst A1 - Hertwig, Andreas A1 - Knoll, Uta A1 - Weise, Matthias T1 - Sub-micrometre coatings as an infrared mirror: a new route to flame retardancy N2 - Most of the polymeric materials used are easy to ignite and show extensive flame spread along their surfaces. Apart from extensive heat release rates, their short time to ignition (tig), in particular, is a key fire hazard. Preventing ignition eliminates fire hazards completely. Protection layers that shift tig by more than an order of magnitude are powerful flame retardancy approaches presenting an alternative to the usual flame retardancy concepts. Coatings are proposed that consist of a three-layer system to ensure adhesion to the substrate, acting as an infrared (IR) mirror and protecting against oxidation. The IR-mirror layer stack is realised by physical vapour deposition in the sub-micrometre (<1 µm) range, reducing heat absorption by up to an order of magnitude. Not only is the ease of ignition diminished (tig is increased by several minutes), the flame spread and fire growth indices are also remarkably reduced to as little as 1/10 of the values of the uncoated polymers open for further optimization. Sub-micrometre thin IR-mirror coatings yielding surface absorptivity <0.1 are proposed as a novel and innovative flame retardancy approach. KW - Coating KW - Fire protection KW - Physical vapour deposition (PVD) KW - IR mirror KW - Ignition PY - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.1122 SN - 0308-0501 SN - 1099-1018 VL - 36 IS - 8 SP - 671 EP - 677 PB - Heyden CY - London AN - OPUS4-27210 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -