Other Engineering Commons^™

Halogen-Free Ultra-High Flame Retardant Polymers Through Enzyme Catalysis, Sethumadhavan Ravichandran, Subhalakshmi Nagarajan, Bon Choel Ku, Bryan Coughlin, Todd S. Emrick, Jayant Kumar, Ramaswamy Nagarajan

Todd S. Emrick

Over the past few years, the use of certain types of halogenated flame retardant additives such as decabromodiphenylether has come under intense scrutiny due to their toxicity, environmental persistence and bio-accumulation. There is an immediate need for the development of non-toxic alternative flame retardant materials and fire resistant polymers with comparable or better efficacies, obtained using benign synthetic approaches. Enzymatic polymerization is being used increasingly as an environmentally friendly alternative method for the synthesis of functional materials including polymers and additives. Here, we report a biocatalytic synthesis of a new class of thermally stable, ultra-fire resistant polyphenols based on deoxybenzoins. …