Faculty Mentor
Dr. Dibyendu Mukherjee
Department (e.g. History, Chemistry, Finance, etc.)
Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering
College (e.g. College of Engineering, College of Arts & Sciences, Haslam College of Business, etc.)
College of Engineering
Year
2018
Abstract
This poster presents a research initiative in collaboration with the US Army Research Lab (ARL) to synthesize carbon-coated aluminum (Al) nanoparticles (NPs) as energetic materials via laser ablation in organic solutions. Nanomaterials have gained widespread attention recently from an array of scientists and engineers for their desired physical and chemical properties believed to be a product of their high ratio of surface area to volume, thus making them favorable for a wide variety of applications. Specifically, here Al NPs are favored for their energetic characteristics and usually employed as solid-state propellants. However, it is challenging and unsafe to preserve pristine Al NPs without any unwanted surface oxidation in ambient conditions, which in turn passivates and also retards their energetic activities. Therefore, a facile technique is proposed to synthesize Al NPs encapsulated in graphitic shells to prevent the unwanted surface oxidation. This research focuses on the laser ablation synthesis in solution (LASiS) method to synthesize the aforementioned graphitic-Al shell-core NPs. In recent years, LASiS has proven to be a green, facile, and inexpensive way to synthesize various nanomaterials with engineered interfacial properties for energetic and catalytic applications. The size distribution and composition of the nanoparticles can be manipulated by controlling the laser wavelength, laser flux, ablation time, solvent in which the metal target was immersed, and the laser beam’s focus. Finally, laser-assisted shock wave velocity measurements from the US ARL team confirmed that the carbon-coated Al NPs exhibit excellent exothermic and propulsive behaviors. We hypothesize that this is due to the tailoring of the particle sizes and the carbon shells, which in the future can be more specifically designed as fullerene-type shells to fine-tune the interfacial stresses, pressure, and consequently, the reactivity of these shell-core NPs.
Laser Ablation Synthesis of Energetic Graphitic Coated Aluminum Nanoparticles
This poster presents a research initiative in collaboration with the US Army Research Lab (ARL) to synthesize carbon-coated aluminum (Al) nanoparticles (NPs) as energetic materials via laser ablation in organic solutions. Nanomaterials have gained widespread attention recently from an array of scientists and engineers for their desired physical and chemical properties believed to be a product of their high ratio of surface area to volume, thus making them favorable for a wide variety of applications. Specifically, here Al NPs are favored for their energetic characteristics and usually employed as solid-state propellants. However, it is challenging and unsafe to preserve pristine Al NPs without any unwanted surface oxidation in ambient conditions, which in turn passivates and also retards their energetic activities. Therefore, a facile technique is proposed to synthesize Al NPs encapsulated in graphitic shells to prevent the unwanted surface oxidation. This research focuses on the laser ablation synthesis in solution (LASiS) method to synthesize the aforementioned graphitic-Al shell-core NPs. In recent years, LASiS has proven to be a green, facile, and inexpensive way to synthesize various nanomaterials with engineered interfacial properties for energetic and catalytic applications. The size distribution and composition of the nanoparticles can be manipulated by controlling the laser wavelength, laser flux, ablation time, solvent in which the metal target was immersed, and the laser beam’s focus. Finally, laser-assisted shock wave velocity measurements from the US ARL team confirmed that the carbon-coated Al NPs exhibit excellent exothermic and propulsive behaviors. We hypothesize that this is due to the tailoring of the particle sizes and the carbon shells, which in the future can be more specifically designed as fullerene-type shells to fine-tune the interfacial stresses, pressure, and consequently, the reactivity of these shell-core NPs.