Why is bromine effective as a flame retardant?

In general, the stability of bromine in a typical flame retardant molecule means that the molecule can offer the highest activity as a flame active retardant, while also being cost effective.  The choice of flame retardant systems for any particular application depends on how the material decomposes in a fire, as well as the materials’ physical property. Brominated flame retardants, because they act in the flame, can be used in just about every application.

In textile backcoating, the mode of action ("flame killing") of brominated flame retardants is particularly desirable, since it allows the flame retardant to be coated on one side of the textile, with the flame killing effect on the other side. This is extremely important for upholstered furniture textiles.

Back coating methods are used on fabrics where aesthetics of the front face are very important, i.e. furniture fabrics, drapes, and mattress ticking - see Figure 8 (NAP 2000). These backcoatings or resin binders can be an acrylic copolymer, styrene butadiene co-polymers, or ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer.

The fact that brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are particularly efficient means that frequently they may have less impact on the physical properties of a plastic than other systems. There are also a wide range of BFRs available which enables a formulator to select the optimum product to balance cost with physical properties: temperature resistance, processing characteristics and all the other important characteristics that a particular end use may require.