Additive Or Reactive? An Inventory of 30 Flame Retardants To Stop You From Being Confused!

Additive or Reactive? An inventory of 30 flame retardants to stop you from being confused!

According to the different methods of using flame retardants, people usually divide flame retardants into two categories: reactive and additive.

(1) Reactive flame retardants

Reactive flame retardants are flame retardants with reactive functional groups in the molecule, which can participate in the reaction during the polymer synthesis process and combine into the polymer molecule. Its advantages are good stability, long-lasting flame retardant effect, low toxicity, less impact on the performance of plastics, can be considered an ideal class of flame retardants. The disadvantage is that the application is inconvenient, fewer varieties, the current use of flame retardants accounted for only about 10-20%. Reactive flame retardants are mainly used in thermosetting plastics, sometimes also used in thermoplastics. Some reactive flame retardants can also be used as additive flame retardants.

(2) Additive flame retardants

Additive flame retardants are flame retardants that are mixed into plastics before processing and dispersed in the mixture in physical state. Its characteristics are easy to use, strong applicability, and its current use accounts for 80%-90% of the entire flame retardant. The disadvantage is that while improving the flame retardancy, it reduces certain properties inherent in the plastic itself, such as processability and mechanical properties. Additive flame retardants are commonly used in thermoplastics.

In this article, we collated more than thirty flame retardants according to this way should be how to classify. Under the trend of halogen-free flame retardants, some of them are labelled with bromine content for reference.