Hydroxide‐Based Nanoenergetic Materials

Abstract

Hydroxide‐aluminum based nano‐energetic materials are new class of thermites which demonstrated high theoretical energy capacity of up to 50 kJ cm−3. Most of the hydroxide‐aluminum based systems exhibit a large gas generation (greater than two liters per gram) and high adiabatic combustion temperature (up to 3000 K), which ensures performance that attributes significantly for applications such as solid fuel propulsion, explosives, airbag deployment, etc. Thermodynamic calculations performed for a collection of 16 novel hydroxide‐based nano‐thermite systems show that most of the systems are stable. Four systems, based on bismuth, copper, nickel and cerium hydroxides, were mixed with aluminum to prepare nano‐thermites compositions. These formulations were tested to estimate the heat generation and pressure discharge values during the ignition. These systems were stable below ignition temperature, between 570–600 °C. The strongest performance was recorded for Al−Bi(OH)3 formulation with 5.6 kPa*m3 g−1 peak pressure, which is comparable to highest values reported in literature.