Thermal Data of Perfluorinated Carboxylic Acid Functionalized Aluminum Nanoparticles

Improving the performance of composite energetic materials comprised a solid metal fuel and source oxidizer (known as thermites) has long been pursued thermites for pyrolant flares rocket propellants. The thermites, involving aluminum fuel, can be dramatically improved by utilizing nanometer-sized particles (nAl) leading to vastly higher reaction velocities, owing high surface area nAl. Despite benefits increased area, there are still several problems inherent nanoscale reactants including particle aggregation, viscosity composited materials. nAl composites is cumbersome processing with inert polymer binder formulations, especially at mass loadings necessary industry standards. In order improve loaded energetics, was passivated covalently bound monolayers perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) novel fluorinated solvent washing technique. This work also details quantitative binding these using infrared spectroscopy, in addition output from calorimetric thermogravimetric analysis.