Cross Directorate Proposal: Nanostructured Materials for Munitions and Propellants-Production, Modeling, and Characterization

Over the past few years RWME has been investigating the use of the liquid helium droplet beam technique to generate of single component and composite nanoclusters at low temperature, deposit the clusters onto various substrates, and then investigate the stability, chemical, and physical properties of the subsequent cluster-based material. This report provides an annual status update in the understanding of the environment of the clusters prior to, during, and after collision of the doped droplet with a surface. To do this, we fabricate a range of clusters of varying sizes, examine them prior to deposition using mass spectrometry, then examine the properties of the resulting films using spectroscopic, conductivity, electron microscopy, and diffraction techniques. Materials to be discussed include pure magnesium, magnesium- perfluoropolyether composite, copper-magnesium core-shell, and gold nanoclusters. Also included in this interim report are the latest results on studying nanoenergetic materials based on aluminum and iodine oxides at the milligram scale.