Thermite at the Nano-Scale

Physical vapor deposition of thin film thermites allow for a clean avenue for probing fundamental properties of nanoenergetic materials that prove difficult for traditional powder processing. Precise control over diffusion dimensions, microstructure, and total amount of material are able to be realized with this fabrication technique and the testing of such materials provide valuable insight into how oxidation occurs.;This thesis provides several examples of how existing PVD techniques can be coupled with thermite constituents to further the energetic community's understanding of how oxidation occurs in the solid state with the variation of geometric and chemical alterations. The goal of these investigations was to elucidate which material properties and mechanisms drive exothermic activity.;The thermite thin films of Al/CuO, Zr/CuO, and Mg/Cuo with varied reducing metal constituents were tested under slow heating conditions. The trend of the metal variation demonstrated the importance of terminal oxide diffusion properties in either impeding or enhancing oxygen exchange. When the reducing metal forms a terminal oxide with limited oxygen diffusivity, exothermicity requires elevated activation energies to commence self-sustaining reaction. In addition to the effects of chemical variation, bilayer thicknesses were varied and found to decrease exothermic peak temperatures similar to the trends found in intermetallic thin film energetics and powder energetic materials.;The thin film thermites were also subjected to extreme initiation methods via laser driven flyer plate impact ignition and high heating rate heat treatment (105 K/s). General insight into nano thermite behavior at environments characteristic of applications was sought, and similar trends discovered among slow vs rapid testing. Decreasing reaction dimensions yielded higher reactivity and diffusion barrier properties role in impacting exothermic behavior persist to into the microsecond regime.;Ultimately through this work it has been shown that the process of thermite exothermicity proceeds through more than one pathway and more than the free energy of oxidation of reducing metals should be considered when describing how oxygen exchange occurs. It has been shown that these self-sustaining reactivity can be realized in the solid and.