The ignition temperature of the Al-CuO thermite was measured using DTA at a scan rate of 50 C.min -1 in a nitrogen atmosphere. Thermite reactions are difficult to start as they require very high temperatures for ignition, e.g. for Al-CuO thermite comprising micron particles it is ca. 940 C. It was found that the ignition temperature is significantly reduced when the binary Si-Bi 2 O 3 system is added as sensitizer. Further improvement is achieved when the reagents are nano-sized powders. For the composition Al + CuO + Si + Bi 2 O 3 (65.3:14.7:16:4 wt %), with all components nano-sized, the observed ignition temperature is ca. 613 C and a thermal runaway reaction is observed in the DTA.

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