Recent advances on fire retardant coatings on textiles: An overview

 
This presentation is aimed at describing the recent surface engineering approaches that can be exploited for conferring fire retardant features to both natural and synthetic fabrics, particularly referring to cotton, polyester and their blends. More specifically, the potentialities offered by the sol-gel and the Layer by Layer techniques are thoroughly discussed: indeed, these methods can be used for the building up of fully inorganic and/or hybrid organic/inorganic coatings that can effectively protect the underlying fabric substrate from the exposure to a flame or a heat flux.