Enhanced reactivity of boron, through adding nano-aluminum and wet ball milling

Boron is a significant component of energetic materials due to its high energy release on both a mass and volumetric basis. However, due to long-term exposure in air, boron is easily oxidized to form thick surface oxidation layer which significantly decreases the activity of boron. In this study, we demonstrate the wet high-energy milling method to purify the long-term storage boron and assemble the nanoaluminum and boron together to improve the activity of boron. The results show that after wet ball milling, the surface of boron particles becomes rough, and the aluminum is uniformly distributed on the surface of boron observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), respectively. Determined by simultaneous thermal analysis thermogravimetric-differential scanning calorimetric (TG-DSC) in oxygen, the heat release of boron is 444% higher than the boron without any processing. Combustion analyses of delay compositions consisting of boron powder with and without wet ball milling combined with barium dichromate were conducted to study the reactivity activity. The result shows that the average combustion rate for delay composition containing functionalization boron is 2.4 to 3.4 times than the others containing common boron. Overall, our work demonstrates that wet ball milling with adding nanoaluminum can be used an effective method to improve the reactivity activity of long-storage boron.