3D graphene aerogel-supported copper azide nanoparticles as primary explosive with excellent initiation performance

Copper azide (CA), a high energy primary explosive, had been investigated with various supporter materials to reduce its sensitivity characteristics. However, effective supporter had not been designed to fully reduce CAs sensitivity characteristics. Hence, we presented a three-dimensional (3D) graphene aerogel-supported CA (CA-GAs) strategy to meet those needs. CA-GAs was prepared using 3D GA as the framework to uniformly grip CA. The SEM and XRD measurements revealed that CA nanoparticles were fully dispersed on GAs, the in-situ azidation reaction of Cu precursor and CAs crystalline structure were not affected by GAs. DSC further verified the thermal stability of CA-GAs. Moreover, electrostatic ignition experiment was employed to investigate CA-GAs' ignition time, input energy, and electrical ignition performance. Those results showed that CA-GAs could be reliably detonated by a 3.5 Omega SCB, the average electric ignition voltage, ignition time, and input energy of CA-GAs were 19.125 V, 21 mu s, and 0.56 mJ, respectively. All these results illustrated that GAs was an effective supporter for the stabilization of CA.

Automated summary

A three-dimensional graphene aerogel-supported copper azide (CA-GAs) strategy was proposed and experimentally shown to effectively stabilize CA, achieving reliable detonation.