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Thermally insulating and fire-retardant lightweight anisotropic foams based on nanocellulose and graphene oxide

Nature Nanotechnology volume 10, pages 277–283 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

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.

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Figure 1: Fabrication and overview of the mechanical, thermal and fire-retardant properties of nanocomposite foams.
Figure 2: Microstructure of freeze-cast nanocomposite foams.
Figure 3: Thermal transport properties of anisotropic nanocomposite foams.
Figure 4: Mechanical properties and crosslinking of nanocomposite foams.
Figure 5: Flame resistance of the nanocomposite foams.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Swedish Strategic Foundation (SSF) (grant no. RMA11-0065), the Wallenberg Wood Science Centre (WWSC) and the Swedish Research Council (VR). L.B. acknowledges support from the Humboldt Foundation and B.W. and G.S.A. thank the Cost Action MP1202 for support. L. Wågberg is thanked for providing the nanocellulose. The authors thank, L. Berglund, J. Kochumalayil, J. Yuan, D. Kocjan and J. Lagerwall for help and valuable discussions and Z. Bacsik, A. Ojuva, J. Hornatowska, P. Fajdiga, M. Vrabelj, A. Di Blasio and F. Cuttica for various contributions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 106 91, Sweden

    Bernd Wicklein, German Salazar-Alvarez & Lennart Bergström

  2. Engineering Ceramics Department, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, 1000, Slovenia

    Andraž Kocjan

  3. Wallenberg Wood Science Centre, Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Stockholm, 100 44, Sweden

    German Salazar-Alvarez

  4. Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, Torino, 24 10129, Italy

    Federico Carosio & Giovanni Camino

  5. Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam-Golm Science Park, Am Mühlenberg 1, Potsdam, 14476, Germany

    Markus Antonietti

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Contributions

B.W., G.S.A., L.B. and M.A. conceived the study and B.W. and L.B. planned and coordinated the work. A.K. performed the thermal conductivity measurements and analysed the data together with B.W. B.W. carried out and analysed the mechanical strength data. B.W., F.C. and G.C. carried out and analysed the flame retardancy measurements. B.W., G.S.A. and L.B. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lennart Bergström.

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Wicklein, B., Kocjan, A., Salazar-Alvarez, G. et al. Thermally insulating and fire-retardant lightweight anisotropic foams based on nanocellulose and graphene oxide. Nature Nanotech 10, 277–283 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.248

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