Preparation Methods, Performance Improvement Strategies, and Typical Applications of Polyamide Foams

Abstract

Polyamide (PA) foams have been widely applied in many areas due to their outstanding properties and currently are receiving more extensive attention from the fundamental research and materials communities. However, poor melt strength and low matrix modulus seriously affect the preparation of high-performance PA foams and hinder their commercialization process. To overcome the limitations, a lot of efforts have been devoted to the research subject. In spite of the striking progress made dealing with PA foams, there has been no review to summarize the studies yet. This review begins with the consideration of the foaming process of PA and commonly used methods for PA foaming. Special emphasis is placed on effective means to enhance the performance of PA foams. Then, the typical applications of PA foams are presented, such as flame retardant, oil spill cleaning, electromagnetic shielding, and tissue engineering. Finally, the future perspective of PA foams will be outlined as well as the recommended future research directions about them.