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Researchers have made a porous foam from a mineral-plastic material that they describe as non-flammable. It is a laboratory research result—not evidence of a certified building-insulation product or a foam currently available to buy. The material is a calcium salt of poly(acrylic acid), and the published work reports a route for making it through a hydrogel stage.
What is mineral plastic foam?
In the 2021 paper “Mineral plastic foams,” Philipp Menold, Helmut Cölfen, and Cosima Stubenrauch describe a foam made from poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and calcium. They call the material mineral plastic foam. It is not conventional plastic foam with a fire-retardant coating; its chemistry and preparation are the focus of the research.
The authors summarize their work this way: “We describe a route to synthesize a mechanically stable, non-flammable poly(acrylic acid)–calcium salt (the so-called mineral plastic) foam whose structure can be tailored.” That is the paper’s characterization of the material, not a fire rating for a finished building product.
How is the foam made?
The process turns a liquid mixture into a porous solid by first making a foam, then setting its continuous liquid phase into a gel, and finally drying that hydrogel foam.
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- Prepare and foam a PAA-containing solution. The paper describes foaming an aqueous solution containing poly(acrylic acid). The University of Stuttgart’s 2020 account gives a formulation involving sodium carbonate solution, polyacrylic acid, and calcium chloride.
- Gel the continuous phase. The liquid surrounding the bubbles is converted into a hydrogel, which helps preserve the foam’s structure.
- Dry the hydrogel foam. The resulting dried material is a porous mineral plastic foam.
The university describes the development and its potential uses in its 2020 announcement. The journal paper reports pores around 220 micrometers in size. It also reports that the foam can be dissolved in acidic solution, providing a possible route for recycling the material; that finding alone does not establish a complete recycling system or its environmental impact.
Does “non-flammable” mean it is fireproof?
No. The paper’s abstract calls the foam non-flammable, which is a reported property of the material studied. It does not establish that an insulation product made from it passes a building-code test, meets a particular fire classification, or makes an entire wall, roof, vehicle, or electronic enclosure fire-safe.
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Those conclusions require evidence about the tested product and its intended use, including standardized fire-test results and, where relevant, testing of the complete assembly. The sources cited here do not provide a product certification, an assembly rating, long-term field-performance data, or current installation records.
A 2022 review of fire-retardant hydrogels provides broader context: unmodified hydrogels generally have low fire retardancy, while reported performance often depends on modifications, additives, or hybrid structures. The review surveys multiple technologies; it is not an independent validation of this particular mineral plastic foam’s performance in buildings.
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Could it be used as insulation?
Potentially, but the available evidence supports that as a proposed application, not a demonstrated commercial use. The University of Stuttgart named building construction, vehicles, and electronic-device housings as possible insulation applications. Its announcement also said the researchers were seeking industrial partners to produce the foam at scale.
The announcement cited a forecast of 579 million cubic meters of insulation materials globally by 2025 and more than 200 million cubic meters in Europe. These were forecasts quoted in 2020, not measurements of the current market and not evidence that mineral plastic foam captured any share of it.
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To judge whether this foam is suitable for a particular insulation job, a buyer or engineer would need comparable data such as thermal conductivity, mechanical strength, moisture and weather durability, standardized fire results, manufacturing scale, and price. The cited sources do not establish enough of those values to compare the foam with established insulation materials or claim that it is better.
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The cited sources do not establish that it is currently manufactured, licensed, or commercially available. In July 2020, the University of Stuttgart reported a patent application and a search for industrial partners. Patent database pages for German application DE102020002914A1 and international publication WO2021228996A1 display the statuses “withdrawn” and “ceased,” respectively. Those are database status fields, not a verified legal determination; official patent registers would be needed to confirm legal status. They also do not determine whether the material is licensed or sold today.
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Accordingly, the research supports describing mineral plastic foam as a material with potential insulation applications and a reported scale-up ambition—not as a product readers can presently order. Any current licensing or supply opportunity would need to be confirmed directly through the universities’ technology-transfer channels.
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