Safe and Efficient Strategy for Directly Preparing Azide Aerogels for Microinitiation Device

The main bottlenecks limiting the practical application of primary explosives are the contradiction between safety and detonation performance, as well as the inherent brittleness of powder charge. Traditional methods to improve sensitivity performance such as adding carbon nanomaterials or embedding metal-organic framework (MOF) structure methods are mostly powders, which are inherently brittle and unsafe. Here, we report three types of typical azide aerogels that can be directly prepared and obtained in this paper by combining electrospinning with aerogel. Their electrostatic sensitivity and flame sensitivity were significantly improved and could be detonated successfully at an initiation voltage of 25 V, demonstrating good ignition performance. This enhancement is primarily due to the porous carbon skeleton structure evolved from a three-dimensional nanofiber aerogel, which has good thermal and electrical conductivity characteristics and can also uniformly load azide particles, contributing to improved explosive system sensitivity. The most important aspect of this method is that it can directly prepare molded explosives, which can be matched with the micro-electrical-mechanical system (MEMS) process, and it offers a new idea for the preparation of high-security molded explosives.