Smart Energetics: Sensitization of the Aluminum‐Fluoropolymer Reactive System

Abstract

The development of smart energetics is at the forefront of the research community. The desire is to have energetics that could have ON/OFF capability, tunable performance, and/or targeted energy delivery. Therefore, efforts have been focused on designing systems that respond to stimuli in a controlled manner. In this paper, nanoscale aluminum (nAl)/fluoropolymer reactive systems are studied and the piezoelectric nature of the fluoropolymers is used as a means to sensitize the system. Using a capacitor type setup, and drawing on our previous efforts, three fluoropolymer/nAl systems are studied and their sensitivities upon application of a DC voltage are quantified using BAM drop weight as the indicator. It is found, upon application of 1.0 kV, that for all three fluoropolymer/Al systems the sensitivity is greatly increased. For example, for the THV221/nAl system the impact energy required for ignition is reduced from 63 to 10 J. Further increasing the applied voltage is shown to further increase the sensitivity for all systems studied. The role of electroactive phase content and sensitization time is also discussed.