High energy Al@Ni preparation of core-shell particles by adjusting nickel layer thickness

Nickel-coated aluminum powders have attracted significant interest for use as a promising reactive material. Here, nickel layer thickness-tunable core-shell Al@Ni particles were synthesized via an approach combining replacement and electroless plating reaction. The scanning electron microscope (SEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), and energy dispersion spectrometry (EDS) were used to confirm that the samples had extremely dense core-shell structure with nickel layer thickness of 120, 160, 200 and 240 nm. The reaction mechanism was also discussed. Additionally, thermal analysis results in the argon environment showed that when the nickel layer thickness was 200 nm, the maximum heat release of the Al@Ni particles reached 1308 ± 6 J/g. These findings indicate that this approach is expected to be applicable for preparing reactive metallic composite particles.