Effects of Aluminum Particle Size on Al/CuO Nanothermite Reaction

Abstract

In this research a novel approach of developing a nanowire Al/CuO Nano thermite has been indigenously designed The first part is to prepare the copper oxide nanowire by thermal oxidation The copper wire materials with different wire diameters are washed with hydrochloric acid and shaken in acetone After thermal oxidation under selected heating conditions the copper after oxidation is observed by scanning electron microscope The second part is to study the electrophoretic deposition method we built our own electrophoresis device which uses the voltage difference between the copper wire and the copper tube of the concentric core to generate the electric field of the cylindrical coordinate system which can be used in 3:1 ethanol/water solution The nano aluminum particles are deposited between the gaps of the copper oxide nanowires and developed for Electrophoretic deposition method (EPD) on fixed time duration 10s for the fixed electric field 160v During this process various significant factors and various parameters has to be in consideration such as the Aluminum Particle size Zeta potential for different Particle diameters such as 50 70 80 and 100 nm We use quantranix Darvin Laser 527-50-M for laser ignition on the bottom tip of the nanothermite wire the power of the laser source can be controlled by the control system the laser can generate the required amount of heat for the ignition The reaction propagation on various particle size of Al/CuO Nanothermite has been visualized and studied using schlieren and high speed camera The result states that the velocity propagation of the nanothermite wire reduces with increasing particle size diameter than the smaller aluminum particle size

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ming-Hsun Wu (Supervisor)