Direct Deposit of Fiber Reinforced Energetic NanoComposites

Abstract

The ideal situation of assembling an energetic nanoparticles-polymer matrix is obtaining materials with high particle loading while still maintaining mechanical integrity. In this paper, we introduced a direct deposition approach to create a reactive polymer fiber reinforced composite with aluminum (Al-NPs) and copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO-NPs) in a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) reactive binder. Even with up to 70 wt % thermite, these films still maintain a uniform morphology and considerable flexibility. With the same overall material composition, both the reactive and mechanical properties of fiber reinforced films shown marked improvement over the corresponding non-nanofiber films. The combustion propagation velocity of fiber reinforced films is up to 1.8 times faster than the corresponding non-nanofiber films. For the mechanical properties, the films with 110 nm diameter fibers were 2.3, 23 and 5.8 times superior in tensile strength, strain and toughness respectively, as compared to films with the same mass loading but with no fibers. The results suggest deploying a fiber reinforced structure enables fabrication of nanocomposite with high loadings of energetic materials. These result imply that a 3-D printing approach may demonstrate significant advantages in developing advanced propulsion systems.