Flame retardancy of agar membrane reinforced by hollow glass microspheres

With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, polysaccharide packaging materials have received widespread attention. In this work, a kind of novel polysaccharide composite membrane was prepared by hollow glass microspheres (HGM) into agar (AG) and sodium alginate (SA) matrix and then cross-linking by glycerol (abbreviated as AG-SA-HGM). The addition of hollow glass microspheres significantly improved the thermal stability and flame retardancy of the polysaccharide membrane, with a peak heat release rate of only 72.05 kW m −2 . Besides, the prepared flame retardant packaging membrane not only has excellent flexibility, no cracks after folding, and can restore its original state, but also exhibits special properties of front hydrophobicity (contact angle of 123.82°) and back hydrophilicity (contact angle of 35.33°). Therefore, AG-SA-HGM composite membrane has great potential in flame retardant applications.