The use of polymer based composites for structural applications is becoming more and more important thanks to their light weight, their strength related to their weight, their corrosion resistance, their design flexibility, etc. Unfortunately, the resins commonly used between the carbon or glass fiber layers exhibit poor thermal and fire resistance. Subsequently, the composites retain no mechanical strength after thermal and fire exposure. To design a multifunctional material able to resist fire, new research strategies are developed. Among them, benzoxazine resins have recently attracted extensive attention due to their outstanding performances such as near-zero shrinkage upon curing, high stiffness, excellent thermal properties, lower moisture absorption, better resistance to flammability and to UV radiation. Moreover,<br/>due to the large availability of natural phenolic compounds, benzoxazine resins are emerging as new players in sustainable polymeric materials. A second approach to improve the properties of organic matrices consists in adding nanoparticles which exhibit a high aspect ratio, high specific surface, low density, high strength, stiffness and other specific properties (electrical conductivity for instance) and which do not generate toxic smoke or corrosive fumes during combustion. When compared to conventional fillers, nanoparticles are usually incorporated at low loadings (&lt;5wt%) that enable to not degrade mechanical properties of the polymer matrix while enhancing other properties.<br/>This presentation summarizes our developments and trends in the field of advanced polybenzoxazines based matrices for multifunctional composites.

Multifunctional benzoxazine matrices for light weight and high performance composite materials

256th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.