Update on Flame Retardant Textiles: State of the Art, Environmental Issues and Innovative Solutions

This publication describes progress in the flame retardancy of natural and synthetic fibres/fabrics. Such progress evolves from traditional approaches (back-coating methods), current chemical solutions (P-, N-, S-, B-based flame retardants) to novel contemporary strategies (deposition and/or assembly of architectures, plasma treatments, sol-gel processes, and so on). More specifically, the fundamental aspects and chemistry of flame-retardant textile technologies (including back-coating process) and the obtained improvements are reviewed thoroughly, taking into account the detrimental environmental effects due to the use of halogen-based additives such as bromine derivatives. Then, an overview of the chemical development of flame retardant strategies based on halogen-free compounds is summarised. The third part of this book is devoted to the description of contemporary innovatory solutions based on nanotechnology. In detail, the surface deposition of coatings having a different chemical structure is highlighted. To this aim, the effect of (nano)architectures derived from (nano)particle adsorption, plasma deposition/grafting, layer-by-layer assembly, and sol-gel treatments on fibres/fabrics are discussed thoroughly.