Improving weathering resistance of flame-retarded polymers

Most flame-retarded polymer products need to be highly durable throughout their service lifetime in many demanding applications areas such as construction, transportation, electric equipment, and textiles, where low flammability in combination with high resistance toward oxidative deterioration triggered by the action of light, heat, and/or mechanical stress is a mandatory quality. To achieve this, it is essential to better understand the overall interplay (both physical and chemical processes) between different components such as different flame retardant structures in their respective polymers and in the presence of coadditives such as processing stabilizers, antioxidants, light stabilizers, metal deactivators, filler deactivators, ultraviolet absorbers, and so on, in the flame-retarded polymer product. In this article, the key difficulties in improving weathering resistance of flame-retarded polymers are reviewed. (c) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013