Systems and methods for controllable synthesis of energetic nanocomposites

Abstract

Provided are systems and methods for synthesis of metastable intermolecular composites, specifically energetic nanocomposites. The method may include dispersing a reductive fuel within a first aqueous solution and combining the reductive fuel solution with a second aqueous solution comprising a metal oxide and base to create a reductive fuel-metal oxide/base solution. The reductive fuel-metal oxide/base solution is mixed and solid material is filtered and collected from the mixture. The solid material is heated to obtain reductive fuel-metal oxide energetic nanocomposites. The ratio of base to metal oxide can be varied to achieve different structures of including core-shell or well-mixed nanocomposites. The reductive fuel may be aluminum nanoparticles, the metal oxide may be copper oxide, and the base may be ammonia. The method can be used for mass production of energetic nanocomposites and the structure of the energetic nanocomposites can be varied to tune the energetic performance of the energetic nanocomposites.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.