Nitrogen-rich energetic polymer powered aluminum particles with enhanced reactivity and energy content

Abstract

Aluminum particles are of significant interest in enhancing the energy release performance of explosives. One of the major impediments to their use is that Al2O3 shell significantly decreases overall performance. To address this issue, we investigate creating aluminum particles with a glycidyl azide polymer (GAP) coating to improve their reactivity while retaining their energy content. We found that the aluminum particles were coated with a GAP layer of thickness around 8.5 nm. The coated aluminum particles were compared to non-coated powder by the corresponding reactivity parameters obtained from simultaneous differential scanning calorimetry, thermal gravimetric analysis, coupled with mass spectral and infrared spectral analyses. Besides, the comparison on the energy content was also conducted based on P–t tests and a laser-induced air shock from energetic materials (LASEM) technique. It was found that GAP shifted the oxidation onset of aluminum particles to a lower temperature by ~ 10 °C. Besides, the oxidation activation energy of aluminum particles was also reduced by ~ 15 kJ mol−1. In return, aluminum particles reduced the activation energy of the second stage decomposition of the GAP by 276 kJ mol−1. And due to the synergistic effect between aluminum and GAP, the decomposition products of GAP were prone to be oxycarbide species rather than carbonitride species. In addition, the P–t test showed the peak pressure and pressurization rate of GAP coated aluminum particles were separately 1.4 times and 1.9 times as large as those of non-coated aluminum particles. Furthermore, the LASEM experiment suggested the shock wave velocity of the GAP coated aluminum particles was larger than that of non-coated aluminum particles, and the largest velocity difference for them could be 0.6 km s−1. This study suggests after coating by GAP, the aluminum particles possess enhanced reaction performance, which shows potential application value in the fields of aluminized explosives and other energetic fields.

New 5-Aminotetrazole-Based Energetic Polymers: Synthesis, Structure and Properties

“…The structure of GAP represents a linear polyester macromolecule whose side chain carries explosophoric azidomethyl groups. Because of the acceptable density level [ 5 ], good thermal stability [ 6 , 7 ], positive enthalpy of formation [ 8 ] and good compatibility with constituents of energetic materials [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ], the said azido polymer is one of the most promising alternatives to inert polymeric binders (such as HTPB) to achieve a higher energetic performance of systems based thereon [ 13 , 14 , 15 ].…”

Nanoenergetic Composites with Fluoropolymers: Transition from Powders to Structures

“…Therefore, the application of these energetic binders to SNE are restricted to mostly coating applications, where the amount of energetic binder will not be higher than 10 wt% with respect to the composite. Consequently, the SNEs were studied in the form of coated powders, as the amount of energetic binder is inadequate to form SNE-based reactive structures [ 5 ].…”