Study of energy release in Fe2O3/Al nano-thermite with graphene as an additional fuel

In nano-thermites, due to improper contacts between the reactants in solid-state reaction, the complete energy release during redox-reaction is still challenging. Here, Fe2O3/Al nano-thermite is synthesized with different weight fraction of multi-layered graphene (MLG) nanoplatelets by physical mixing technique. X-ray diffraction reveals that the synthesis method does not change the phase of reactants. The morphology of nano-thermite is examined by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy which reveals that MLG nanoplatelets are homogeneously dispersed in the samples. Structural stability of MLG nanoplatelets present in nano-thermite is observed by Raman spectroscopy. The nano-thermite reaction is analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry. The results show that an increase in MLG content in nano-thermite sample Al/Fe2O3, from 0 wt% to 12 wt% is responsible for increase in the corresponding exothermic enthalpy from 71 J/g to 1537 J/g. On the contrary, ignition temperature and activation energy of these samples get reduced with increasing MLG. [Display omitted] •Multi-layered graphene nanoplatelets are used as an additional fuel in Al/Fe2O3 nano-thermite.•Energy release during thermite reaction is described by Mars-van Krevelen mechanism.•Calculated energy release in thermite reaction is compared with the theoretical value.•Activation energy is calculated for thermites mixture using the Kissinger method.