Thermal decomposition behavior and kinetic study of nitrocellulose in presence of ternary nanothermites with different oxidizers

Nanothermites have recently attracted a great deal of interest in both military and civilian domains owing to their capability of igniting or exploding and releasing a significant quantity of heat via a redox reaction. In this study, three ternary nanothermites, which contain MgAl alloy as fuel and different metal oxides (MXOY = CuO, NiO, TiO2) as oxidizers, were prepared through the arrested reactive milling technique. These metastable intermolecular composites were introduced to nitrocellulose (NC), using a fast solution drying technique, to assess their catalytic behavior. The as-obtained energetic composites, namely, NC/MgAl-MXOY, were scrutinized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The ignition delay time of NC/MgAl-MXOY composite films was also determined, and the results revealed the positive effect of the introduction of nanothermite through the decrease of its value compared to pure NC. Using the isoconversional kinetic analysis, the Arrhenius parameters associated with the thermal decomposition of the as-obtained NC/MgAl-MXOY energetic composites films were also evaluated. The findings indicated that the choice of the oxidizer within the nanothermite composition significantly influences the decomposition behavior of the NC/MgAl-MXOY energetic composites. Based on the obtained results, the MgAl-CuO nanothermite provides better performance than MgAl-NiO and MgAl-TiO2 nanoparticles.