MunitionsMunitions that go further, much faster
Researchers discovered a new way to get more energy out of energetic materials containing aluminum, common in battlefield systems, by igniting aluminum micron powders coated with graphene oxide. The discovery coincides with the one of the U.S. Army’s modernization priorities: Long Range Precision Fires. This research could lead to enhanced energetic performance of metal powders as propellant/explosive ingredients in Army’s munitions.
Researchers from the U.S. Army and top universities discovered a new way to get more energy out of energetic materials containing aluminum, common in battlefield systems, by igniting aluminum micron powders coated with graphene oxide.
This discovery coincides with the one of the Army’s modernization priorities: Long Range Precision Fires. This research could lead to enhanced energetic performance of metal powders as propellant/explosive ingredients in Army’s munitions.
The U.S. Army says that graphene, lauded as a miracle material, is considered the strongest and lightest material in the world. It’s also the most conductive and transparent, and expensive to produce. Its applications are many, extending to electronics by enabling touchscreen laptops, for example, with light-emitting diode, or LCD, or in organic light-emitting diode, or OLED displays and medicine like DNA sequencing. By oxidizing graphite is cheaper to produce en masse. The result: graphene oxide (GO).
Although GO is a popular two-dimensional material that has attracted intense interest across numerous disciplines and materials applications, this discovery exploits GO as an effective light-weight additive for practical energetic applications using micron-size aluminum powders (µAl), i.e., aluminum particles one millionth of a meter in diameter.
The research team published their findings in the October edition of ACS Nano with collaboration from the RDECOM Research Laboratory, the Army’s corporate research laboratory (ARL), Stanford University, University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Argonne National Laboratory.
This new published work signals a beginning at ARL for the development of functionalized particles as novel energetics under several new leveraged programs led by Drs. Chi-Chin Wu and Jennifer Gottfried. ARL is leading joint scientific efforts with the University of Tennessee, Texas Tech University, Army Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny, N.J., and with the Air Force Research Laboratory establishing a new research avenue to develop superior novel metal propellant/explosive ingredients to protect more lives for the Army warfighters.
