Proposal Number: CBET-0644832 Principal Investigator: Weeks, Brandon L Affiliation: Texas Tech University Proposal Title: CAREER: Understanding Nanoscale Properties of Energetic Materials
This award focuses on the science required to design energetic materials whose performance critically depends upon nanoscale structures. The awardee argues that while use of energetic materials is widespread through the resource and manufacturing industries, there have been few new materials developed in the last 100 years. The stated goals of this research are to determine properties of energetic materials experimentally at the nanometer scale, to link these findings with bulk properties, and to use these findings to develop rational design tools for new energetic materials.
Key techniques will be nanoscale lithography and property measurement with a heated atomic-force-microscopy tip and with small-angle X-ray scattering, used to study changes due to physical or thermal loads in a nanoscale domain. Collaboration with Sandia Albuquerque is another aspect aiding the potential impact of the work.
Broad Impacts: Technological impact will be significant if the fundamental advances are found successfully by this research, as energetic materials are so widely used.
In addition, a key part of the CAREER award is to create substantial societal impact through its education plan. This awardee's CAREER educational plan has four thrusts: participation in an undergraduate-mentoring program, work with a local 7th-grade teacher to introduce a math/science "application activity," to develop courses and a minor in energetic materials, and to participate in continuing-education activities.
could be extended to the macroscale. The overall implications of this work would be that nanoscale amounts of energetic materials could be used for testing which would be safer for end users. New techniques were developed to produce nanoscale energetic materials including thermal evaporation, spin coating and optical spectroscopy. Many nanoscale properties were found to extend to the macroscale including vapor pressure and activation energy for sublimation. We also focused on methods to control and/or pattern thin films of energetic materials to better understand ‘hot spot’ formation during a combustion event. We developed methods for patterning arrays of energetic materials using surface energy, and lift off techniques. These tools are relevant to a broad community interested in fabrication of any organic thin film. We also discovered that many energetic materials form dendritic structures when deposited on a surface. We have exploited this novel behavior to develop a new technique called Tip Induced Crystallization Lithography (TICL) where arrays of crystals can be fabricated in arbitrary patterns. Finally, we investigated the effect of adding nanomaterials to energetic materials. We found we were able to modify the initiation sensitivity, thermodynamic properties and morphology of energetic materials through the addition of nanomaterials such as graphene. The results are promising to improve the thermal stability and improve the combustion behavior of energetics doped with nanomaterials. The project also focused on recruiting of secondary students to consider STEM disciplines. This was achieved by developing youtube videos (TTUexploisves and TTU highspeedvideo) which teachers can access freely to show to their students. The videos have been used by TTUISD which is an outreach school district aimed at homeschooled students. Other uses of the videos were from Super Saturday’s and Science it’s a Girls Thing which are both outreach programs geared at K-12 students offered at Texas Tech.
