Experimental analysis of carbon-doped glycidyl azide polymer with Nd:YAG laser pulse in vacuum

Abstract

The propulsive properties of the energetic polymer glycidyl azide polymer (GAP) doped with carbon nanoparticles in the transmission mode were studied and a 1064nm Nd:YAG laser with a pulse width of 9ns was selected. According to the Propulsion performance parameter of GAP with different carbon nanoparticles contents and thickness, combined with plume image, the reasons for improving the propulsion performance of laser ablation GAP by carbon nanoparticles doping are analyzed and the design scheme of the structure composition of the polymer target is preliminarily explored. The experimental results show that the 1064nm laser absorption of the polymer GAP is greatly enhanced and the propulsion performance is obviously improved after doping with carbon nanoparticles, but the propulsion performance of the polymer can not be significantly improved by increasing the carbon contents higher than 1%. The GAP after doped with high carbon nanoparticles contents exhibits metal-like surface absorption characteristic and the absorption depth to laser decreases. Under the transmission mode, with the increase of target thickness, the incomplete ablation mass increases, which greatly reduces the utilization ratio of GAP. The optimal ablation efficiency of GAP target with thicknesses of 54μm was more than 250%, and plume images showed that ablation and decomposition were very sufficient. It is appropriate for the target of laser ablation micro thruster.