Investigation into the gel substrate fabrication of a novel ammonium amine explosive and its generic properties exploration

Abstract

Gels from crosslinked polymer chains are promising soft matters which are attracting enormous research interests in applications such as biomedical, sensing, antibiofouling, intelligence and advanced manufacturing. In this work, gels composed of polymer network are used for components stabilization in a novel water-resistant explosive, termed as ammonium amine explosive. The ammonium amine explosive is endowed with water resistance taking advantages of the swelling property of polymer network. Moreover, this ammonium amine explosive is featured by its facile, mild, intrinsically safe and energy saving fabrication method compared to universal explosives’ manufacturing technique which generally includes high temperature or high-speed shearing process. The density and microstructure of the explosive gel substrates is found to be pH dependent. This phenomenon is chemically explained by the crosslinking and foaming reactions of the explosive gel substrates, and further confirmed by water resistance experiments performed on the ammonium amine explosive and the mechanical tests performed on the gel substrates. This work presents a unique application of polymer gel network in a novel engineering explosive, gives a chemical viewpoint into the explosive characterization, and provides a prospective perspective to investigate the other performances and structure of this water-resistant explosives in the future.