Title: Control of crystal morphology in energetic drop-on-demand inkjet method

Authors: Ruirui Zhang; Jun Luo; Hongcheng Lian; Lehua Qi

Addresses: School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China ' School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China ' School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China ' School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China

Abstract: Nano-energetic materials have attracted the worldwide attention since they play an important role in fabricating insensitive high-energy explosives, micro-energetic devices, and explosive detectors. Here, we report a simple, but an effective strategy to control droplet coalescence during inkjet printing, as a major variable, to tailor the nanoscale morphology of energetic materials produced upon evaporation of all-liquid inks. We expect to achieve energetic materials with nanoscale particles by integrating the deposition and the nanocrystallisation of energetic droplets in one step. A proprietary uniform energetic micro-droplet printing equipment is utilised to reveal the influence of temperature, frequency on the particle size of energetic materials. Uniform line, with the particle size between nanometre and microns, is successfully obtained, showing the feasibility of the proposed method for preparing the microscale charge of nano-energetic materials. We also discussed the effect of droplet coalescence on the crystal morphology.

Keywords: uniform droplet inkjet printing; printing parameters; insensitive high-energy explosives; nanometre explosive; inkjet printing; energetic material; micro-energetic devices; microscale charge; control the particle size; crystal morphology; supersaturation; crystal nucleation and growth; grain refinement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNM.2020.110392

International Journal of Nanomanufacturing, 2020 Vol.16 No.4, pp.340 - 354

Received: 30 Jun 2018
Accepted: 16 Apr 2019
Published online: 19 Oct 2020 *

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