Highly reactive Al–Cr2O3 coating for electric-explosion applications

Abstract

As a nanoenergetic material with high energy density, nanothermite coatings composed of metal and oxidant have potential applications in electric-explosion devices. In this study, a novel highly reactive Al–Cr₂O₃ coating was successfully fabricated via electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technology. Moreover, with the advantage of high fabrication rate by employing high concentration of Al and Cr₂O₃ nanoparticles, an electric-explosion device with successful explosion could be easily obtained via assembling an Al–Cr₂O₃ coating onto Cu electric-explosion bridges in only 1 minute, which is much more efficient than other coating technologies. More importantly, considering the successful preparation of other reactive coatings in previous work, we also believe that EPD is a promising general strategy for rapidly preparing electric-explosion device with many other nanoenergetic material coatings such as nanothermite and bimetallic reactive composites.