Flame‐Retardant Eugenol‐Based Polymers via Inverse Vulcanization on Sulfur and Selenium

ABSTRACT To investigate the flame‐retardant efficiency of sulfur and selenium in polymers, and to take into account stringent environmental regulations, different biobased polymers prepared by inverse vulcanization were employed as the research objects. In this work, firstly, sulfur‐containing biobased polymers were synthesized via multicomponent polymerization of element sulfur, eugenol, polyethylene glycol diacrylate and trimethylolpropane triacrylate, and then, the element sulfur was partially replaced by element selenium to prepare sulfur‐ and selenium‐containing biobased polymers. The chemical structures of polymers were confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies (FT‐IR), 1 H solid‐state nuclear magnetic resonance ( 1 H SSNMR) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). In addition, various techniques, such as electronic tensile machine, rotational rheometer, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), UL‐94 vertical burning tests, limiting oxygen index (LOI), microscale combustion calorimeter (MCC) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to characterize the properties of the polysulfides. Observably, S/Se‐1, which has the highest selenium content, exhibited the best flame retardancy with heat release capacity value of 105 J g −1 K −1 , total heat release value of 15.8 kJ g −1 and limiting oxygen index value of 29.8%. Hence, the current work extends the application fields of selenium‐containing polymer and enriches the varieties of flame‐retardant polymers.