Jacopo Profili 1,2, Marie Soula 3, Williams Marcel Caceres Ferreira 1,2, Emanuele Verga Falzacappa 4, Gaétan Laroche 1,2, Véronic Landry 3

1) Laboratoire d'Ingénierie de Surface, Centre de Recherche sur les Matériaux Avancés, Département de Génie des Mines, de la Métallurgie et des Matériaux, Université Laval, 1065 Avenue de la médecine, Québec G1V 0A6, Canada

2) Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec, Hôpital St-François d'Assise, 10 rue de l'Espinay, Québec G1L 3L5, Canada

3) NSERC Industrial Research Chair - Canlak in Interior Wood Product Finishing, Department of Wood and Forest Sciences, Université Laval, Québec

4) Nadir srl, via Torino 155 30172 Venezia, IT

Since the beginning of wood’s use in construction, fire protection remains a major challenge. During the last decades, efficient fire-retardant solutions have been proposed. However, toxicity and environmental persistence of chemicals used have led to the development of new eco-friendly products. As an example, halogenated flame retardants have been replaced by phosphorus compounds. The strong demand for high-performance green treatments has triggered the development of innovative fire protection approaches. Among different solutions, dry processes offer the possibility to synthesize efficient green materials while maintaining a relative low cost.

Plasma treatments have already demonstrated good performances for wood’s surface activation. Plasma modifications have usually been intended for the improvement of impregnation process by increasing the wood permeability and surface tension. More recently, the synthesis of plasma-coatings has also been used to protect the surface of wooden materials against UV (Köhler, 2019) or decay (Roth, 2018). The present study aims to evaluate the potential of atmospheric plasma deposition to prepare fire-retardant thin films on Sugar maple. Wood samples (with and without UV-curable primer) were studied to determine the impact of primer application on the quality of plasma deposition. Profilometry and surface chemical analyses (i.e. FTIR, XPS) were performed to evaluate the deposition characteristics. Fire-retardant performance was explored by using cone calorimetry. Results obtained highlight the potential of using atmospheric plasma thin film deposition as a new method to improve wood fire retardancy.

R. Köhler et al., Forests 10, nᵒ 10 (octobre 2019): 898. https://doi.org/10.3390/f10100898. C. Roth et al., IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering 364 (juin 2018): 012077. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/364/1/012077.