Performance Characterization of Nanoscale Energetic Materials on Semiconductor Bridges (SCBs)

Abstract

The move from conventional energetic composites to nanoscale energetic mixtures (nanoenergetics) has shown dramatic improvement in energy release rate and sensitivity to ignition. A possible application of nanoenergetics is on a semiconductor bridge (SCB). An SCB typically requires a tenth of the energy input as compared to a bridge wire design with the same no-fire and is capable of igniting in tens of microseconds. For very low energy applications SCBs can be manufactured to extremely small sizes and it is necessary to find materials with particle sizes that are even smaller to function, since reactive particles of comparable size to the bridge can lead to problems with ignition reliability for small bridges. Nanoenergetic composites and the use of SCBs have been significantly studied individually, however, the process of combining nanoenergetics with an SCB has not been investigated extensively and is the focus of this paper. Goals of this study are to determine if nanoenergetics can be used with SCBs to further reduce the minimum energy required and improve reliability. The performance of nanoscale aluminum (nAl) and bismuth oxide (Bi 2 O 3 ) with nitrocellulose (NC), Fluorel TM FC 2175 (chemically equivalent to Viton®) and the Glycidyl Azide Polymer (GAP) as binders was quantified using the Neyer algorithm at three weight fractions (5, 7, and 9%) of binder. The threshold energy was also calculated and compared to previous data using conventional materials such as zirconium potassium chlorate (ZPC), mercuric 5-Nitrotetrazol (DXN-1) and titanium sub-hydride potassium perchlorate (TSPP). It was found that even though there was negligible difference in performance between the binders with nAl/Bi 2 O 3 at any of the three binder weight fractions, the results show that these nanoenergetic materials require about half of the threshold energy compared to conventional materials using an SCB with an 84×42 ∝m bridge. A 36×15 ∝m bridge size was also tested using the 9% GAP nAl/Bi 2 O 3 slurry, creating a functioning SCB compared to previous no ignition results using TSPP. These are initial results and further testing is required for full characterization and no optimization has been pursued yet.