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2936 Archive

2018.04.02

Fire alarm wallpaper detects, resists, and warns of house fires

Researchers have designed a "fire alarm wallpaper" made of environmentally friendly, nonflammable materials—including some of the materials found in bone, teeth, and hormones—that can detect a fire, prevent the fire from spreading, and give off an alarm when a fire occurs. When exposed to heat, the wallpaper is transformed from an electrically insulating state into an electrically conductive one, causing it to automatically trigger an alarm that generates loud sounds and warning lights.

The researchers, led by Professor Ying-Jie Zhu at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have published a paper on the fire alarm wallpaper in a recent issue of ACS Nano.

Most of today's commercial wallpaper is made of highly flammable materials, such as plant cellulose fibers or synthetic polymers. Consequently, whenever a fire occurs, the wallpaper often causes the fire to spread.

"Compared with flammable commercial wallpaper, the fire-resistant wallpaper is superior owing to its excellent nonflammability, high-temperature resistance, and automatic fire alarm function," Zhu told Phys.org. "The fire-resistant wallpaper has a white color, mechanical robustness, and high flexibility, it can be processed into various shapes, dyed with different colors, and printed with a commercial printer. Therefore, the fire alarm fire-resistant wallpaper has promising applications in high-safety interior decoration to save human lives and reduce the loss of property in a fire disaster."

The new wallpaper is based on hydroxyapatite, which is the primary inorganic component of bone and teeth. Although hydroxyapatite is typically brittle and inflexible, in previous work the researchers found that forming ultralong nanowires made of hydroxyapatite gives the material a high flexibility suitable for making wallpaper.

In order to make the nonflammable wallpaper a "smart material" capable of automatically sounding an alarm in response to a fire, the researchers incorporated an ink-based thermosensitive sensor onto the wallpaper.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-alarm-wallpaper-resists-house.html#jCp

http://science.gov.az/news/open/7670