Beating the Heat – Novel Synthesis of Triazole and Tetrazole Based Compounds for Use in Spectrally Matched IR Pyrotechnic Countermeasure Formulations

摘要

Infrared guided missiles have been responsible for many air platform casualties. Modern IR guidedmissiles have the potential to distinguish between an air platform and a traditional MTV pyrotechniccountermeasure based upon the difference in the IR spectral colour ratios between them. This has led tothe need for “spectrally matched” IR pyrotechnic formulations with high colour ratios. Various organiccompounds have been shown to be viable candidates for this purpose. This is due to the fact that organicmolecules burn to produce β band emitters CO and CO_2 which contribute to increased colour ratios. Thisis however complicated by the fact that most organic molecules also produce vast amounts of the α bandemitter H_2O resulting in relatively low colour ratios. One approach to address this problem is to employaromatic compounds that have high C/H ratios. Some current aromatic spectral fuels possess low heatsof formation which can result in the formulation having low spectral efficiency. A purposed solution is toappend high energy, nitrogen rich heterocycles to known aromatic spectral fuels to increase their overallspectral efficiency and colour ratios, resulting in desirable spectral properties.