What is it about?
Using electrospraying technique can produce uniform micro-sized spheres with nanoparticles inside. It takes advantage of both micro-sized and nano-sized materials. On one hand, as micro-sized particles, it is easy to handle them and incorporate other materials such as binder or oxidizer in. On the other hand, as nano-sized particles inside, the contact area between the fuel with oxidizer or fuel with air are highly remained.
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Why is it important?
As we know, the nano-materials such as Alex can be added into the formula of energetic materials to highly increase the energy density and energy release rate. However, the viscosity of nano-particles increase the difficulty of handling these materials. People like micro-sized Al more for their flow-ability while handling. However, we also want to remain the nano features of Alex for its much lower ignition temperature and high creativity. Therefore, it will be an ideal approach to handle this issue by assembling nano-materials into micro-sized spheres to take both advantages.
Perspectives
It is very important to achieve homogeneous powder charging into any energetic systems such as propellants, pyrotechnics and explosives. The approach in this paper realizes simultaneously homogeneous powder charging of nano-particles into uniform spheres and close assembling of fuels and oxidizers. It is a revolution of pelleting methods of energetic materials. Besides that, the binders, oxidizers or the other materials in energetic systems can be added before-ahead, which can produce final product of propellants, pyrotechnics and explosives by one-step. It is actually a precondition for using 3D printing techniques by RP&M in energetic field.
Haiyang Wang
University of Maryland at College Park
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Microsphere Composites of Nano-Al and Nanothermite: An Approach to Better Utilization of Nanomaterials, January 2014, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2014-0647.
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