Fabrication of Nitrogen-Doped Graphene Decorated with Organophosphor and Lanthanum toward High-Performance ABS Nanocomposites

Despite substantial advances, it remains imperative but challenging to develop high-performance polymer/graphene nanocomposites combining with excellent mechanical, thermal, and fire-retardant properties. In this work, a novel kind of graphene-based multifunctional nanofiller (La@PN-RGO) was fabricated via the nitrogen doping and the decoration with organophosphorus and lanthanum based on graphene oxide, which is then incorporated into acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene (ABS) resin via melt blending to obtain resultant ABS nanocomposites. As expected, the La@PN-RGO nanosheets were well dispersed in ABS composites. Attractively, with only 1.0 wt % of La@PN-RGO incorporated into ABS matrix, the peak heat release rate (PHRR) and total smoke production (TSP) were significantly reduced by 38% and 36%, which is much superior to its counterparts at the same nanofillers loading level. The notably enhanced fire safety was primarily attributed to the rare earth catalysis accompanied by the lamellae blocking effect and intumescent flame retardancy of La@PN-RGO. Additionally, ABS/La@PN-RGO composite exhibited a 16% enhancement in tensile strength without at the expense of extensibility. This effective and promising method may open a new pathway to obtain high-performance polymer/graphene nanocomposites.