Tailoring porous silicon combustion for lead-free initiators

摘要

A series of rapid combustion experiments are reported that provide evidence to support multiple reaction pathways through a porous silicon/sodium perchlorate system. These experiments were designed to isolate the effects of the various energy transport mechanisms. By separating two strips of a porous silicon energetic material, a convective energy transfer mode was observed, but deterring this convective mode indicated that the reaction could still propagate very rapidly as unsteady "jump" events were observed. These unsteady propagation jumps are attributed to shock waves traveling through the test substrates that carry enough energy to initiate combustion downstream. This rapidly reacting porous silicon provides energy at a rate capable of igniting primary energetic materials, and could be used in future fuzing applications.