A Favorable Improvement in Reactivity between n-Al and Sheet-like Porous CuO as a Nanoenergetic Composite by Graphene Oxide Additives

In this paper, sheet-like porous CuO (p-CuO), which was prepared using a hydrothermal-annealing method, has been first selected as an oxidizer to prepare n-Al/p-CuO/GO nanoenergetic composites. The n-Al/p-CuO/GO nanoenergetic materials were fabricated by means of vacuum-assisted self-assembly. Moreover, the effect from the quantity of added GO was studied on the morphology and reaction performance of the n-Al/p-CuO/G0 nanoenergetic composites. The characterizations show that the resulting n-Al/p-CuO/GO composites have a uniform distribution of reaction components for an improved reactivity. The total heat release of the composite energetic material gradually rises up to 2306.7 J/g with the increasing GO content till 5 wt % but decreases as the GO content continues going up. Most importantly, the maximum value of the reaction exothermic heat is approximately 2.2 times higher in value than that of the as-prepared composite without GO addition. It is found out that the n-Al/p-CuO/GO nanothermite with 5 wt % GO can be successfully ignited by a semiconductor bridge at a 1 A current to produce a big and bright flame, thus indicating that its combustion performance is excellent. Therefore, the new nanoenergetic composites from a combination of GO and n-Al/p-CuO have a bright application prospect in the field of energetic materials.