Novel energetic polymers and their blends

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The turn of this new century has seen energy storage and release, security issues and access to space emerged as new preoccupations.   Polymer based materials have an important role to play in the novel technologies being developed to address these concerns. Energetic polymers are defined as polymers that produce a significant amount of energy during their short decomposition time, often owing to the presence of azide and nitro groups on their backbone. They are not explosives materials per say, but they find use as binders or core components in solid propellants, explosives formulations, and gas generator compositions for explosive actuated safety devices. Usually, energetic polymers are mixed with oxidizers and solid fuels to tailor their energy release process.  *** ***This continuing research program is aimed at developing innovative processes and materials allowing for an increased use of polymers in the field of energetic materials. Over a 5 to 7 years horizon, my objective is obtain novel polymer based energetic materials that can be safely processed and used with minimal environmental costs. About 30 years ago, energetic polymers have received a lot of attention from the development of a handful of now mature thermoset products that often contains azide groups. Most plastics or polymer-rich products are designed to meet specific mechanical and/or barrier properties. Energetic plastics and elastomers must, in addition, also reach satisfactorily combustion properties. These two criteria have so far been almost impossible to obtain in a single thermoplastic product, as the chemical composition that enhances the decomposition process of a polymer, such as the presence of nitro groups, is also detrimental to mechanical properties due to a reduced cristallinity. To break this paradigm, we propose to recall to polymer blends and complex multi-phase materials. This approach has been shown to be very successful in conventional plastics, where blending, alloys and core-shell technologies are now regularly employed. The objective of this program will be to develop novel energetic polymer blends for either thermoset or thermoplastic transformation processes. Our efforts will be deployed on two fronts: 1) the blends of existing energetic polymers and 2) the synthesis of new energetic polymers to enlarge the set of possible blends to investigate. A special attention will be given to polytetrazoles and polytriazoles as they can be produced using a "click chemistry" approach. The envisaged research will be driven with an emphasis on recyclability and reduced environmental footprint. It offers opportunities to increase our fundamental knowledge about multiphase energetic polymer blends.  Smart, safer and recyclable airbags, hypervelocity propulsion systems, advanced thrusters for micro-satellites, environmentally friendly high density explosive compositions are examples of potential applications. ********