24-10-2012, 11:11 AM
Nanostructured Energetic Materials Derived from Sol-Gel Chemistry
ABSTRACT
Initiation and detonation properties are dramatically affected by an energetic material’s microstructural properties. Sol-gel
chemistry allows intimacy of mixing to be controlled and dramatically improved over existing methodologies. One material
goal is to create very high power energetic materials which also have high energy densities. Using sol-gel chemistry we have
made a nanostructured composite energetic material. Here a solid skeleton of fuel, based on resorcinol-formaldehyde, has
nanocrystalline ammonium perchlorate, the oxidizer, trapped within its pores. At optimum stoichiometry it has approximately
the energy density of HMX. Transmission electron microscopy indicated no ammonium perchlorate crystallites larger than 20
nm while near-edge soft x-ray absorption microscopy showed that nitrogen was uniformly distributed, at least on the scale of
less than 80 nm. Small-angle neutron scattering studies were conducted on the material. Those results were consistent with
historical ones for this class of nanostructured materials. The average skeletal primary particle size was on the order of 2.7
nm, while the nanocomposite showed the growth of small 1 nm size crystals of ammonium perchlorate with some clustering
to form particles greater than 10 nm.
ABSTRACT
Initiation and detonation properties are dramatically affected by an energetic material’s microstructural properties. Sol-gel
chemistry allows intimacy of mixing to be controlled and dramatically improved over existing methodologies. One material
goal is to create very high power energetic materials which also have high energy densities. Using sol-gel chemistry we have
made a nanostructured composite energetic material. Here a solid skeleton of fuel, based on resorcinol-formaldehyde, has
nanocrystalline ammonium perchlorate, the oxidizer, trapped within its pores. At optimum stoichiometry it has approximately
the energy density of HMX. Transmission electron microscopy indicated no ammonium perchlorate crystallites larger than 20
nm while near-edge soft x-ray absorption microscopy showed that nitrogen was uniformly distributed, at least on the scale of
less than 80 nm. Small-angle neutron scattering studies were conducted on the material. Those results were consistent with
historical ones for this class of nanostructured materials. The average skeletal primary particle size was on the order of 2.7
nm, while the nanocomposite showed the growth of small 1 nm size crystals of ammonium perchlorate with some clustering
to form particles greater than 10 nm.