Influence of an External Magnetic Field on the Reactions of Magnet-in-Ferroelectric Energetic Crystals

Author(s):

Jennifer L. Gottfried and Shenqiang Ren

Abstract:

The magnetic properties of the molecular energetic ferroelectric material imidazolium perchlorate (ImClO4) were manipulated by adding layers of magnets to the ImClO4 crystals to create 2-D materials containing chromium and either lithium or vanadium. The influence of an external magnetic field generated by stacked permanent magnets (up to 0.78 T) on the energy release of these materials following rapid heating was investigated using the magnetic-field-enhanced laser-induced air shock from energetic materials (B-LASEM) technique. The energy release in three distinct time regimes—during the laser-induced plasma (<13 µs), post-plasma combustion reactions (tens to hundreds of microseconds), and self-sustained combustion reactions on the millisecond timescale—were compared with and without the magnetic field. Estimated detonation velocities and detonation temperatures were calculated and compared with predicted values. Our results demonstrate that magnetic coupling can be used to influence when and how much energy is released by energetic materials under detonation-like conditions using a high-throughput, microscale experiment.