(161aj) High Performance Attapulgite/Mxenes Reinforced PS Foam through Supercritical CO2 Foaming

Supercritical foaming has been proved to be one of effective ways for high performance foams, especially for engineering plastics such as adiabatic and load-bearing plastics. The most important evaluation method of supercritical foamed plastics comes from the number of bubbles per unit. Higher number of bubbles per unit under the same conditions often means higher modulus and lower thermal conductivity. The key to achieve this goal is how to make the resin in the cavity catch more CO₂ molecules and form as many molecular CO₂ reservoirs as possible in the pressure-holding stage of supercritical foaming. Therefore, PS resin was in-situ polymerized and doped by attapulgite clay with high specific surface area and MXene with multi-layer structure. The thermal conductivity of the foam can be reduced from 0.05W/m∙K to 0.04W/m∙K, and the foam modulus can be increased by 200%~300% due to 500-time increasing of bubbles number. This new composite resin combination of supercritical CO₂ foaming precursor is helpful to develop a new generation of simple, environmentally friendly and inexpensive foaming agents to replace a series of fluorine-containing foaming agents that are not conducive to the environment.