Based on the obtained earlier experimental conductivity graphs at detonation of five different high explosives, an analysis was performed which shows a correlation between the carbon content and the conductivity magnitude. An assumption was put forward that the conductivity in the whole detonation wave is provided by the contact mechanism along conductive carbon nanostructures.PACS numbers: 82.33.Vx, 82.40.Fp, 82.60.Qr Detonation products (DP) of condensed high explosives (HEs) of the kind C a H b N c O d contain carbon structures of different types: soot, diamond, amorphous carbon. The ultrafine diamond (UFD) is of particular interest 1,2 due to its application in industry. Presently, there are several questions which are still not clear. Thus, there is no common opinion about the time of nanodiamond formation, and the formation mechanism is not clear 3 .The process of carbon condensation in a detonation wave leads to the UFD formation, and this process which is in turn connected with the kinetics of chemical reactions. Experimental investigation of the kinetics is complicated due to intrinsic features of fast processes, namely short duration (several microseconds), aggressiveness of the investigated medium (high pressures of tens of GPa, high temperatures of several thousand degrees). Therefore, the kinetics is mainly studied by the numerical methods, and its features are recovered from the final results by investigating the structures extracted from DP after a chemical treatment.Dynamics of the UFD formation can be traced by the electric conductivity which is the result of the presence of carbon nanostructures as will be discussed below. Comparison of the literature data on the chemical peak duration and the time dependence of conductivity σ(t) has earlier shown that if a pronounced conductivity peak is present, its duration is close to the duration of the zone of chemical reaction 4,5 . This allows one to observe the kinetics related to the carbon almost directly based on the conductivity graph σ(t).Despite more than half-century research history, the nature of high conductivity at the detonation of condensed HEs is still uncertain. There is no generally acknowledged assumption of the predictive power. The investigation of conductivity is however highly promising. With the detailed understanding of the mechanism of conductivity, it could become a highly sensitive and simple tool to investigate the nanostructural changes of the a) Electronic mail: snp@hydro.nsc.ru. medium with several advantages: only weak disturbance of the process investigated, the diagnostics directly in the high-pressure region, and in real time.B. Hayes proposed in 1965 the correlation between the maximum value of the conductivity at the detonation and the free carbon content in the DP 6 . He also proposed the contact mechanism of the conductivity along the carbon nanostructures which serve as "wires". The density of condensed carbon was obtained numerically taking into account the compression of medium in the detonation wave. The dens...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.