Preparation and Sensitivity Measurements of Graphene Oxide-RDX Composite

The effect of graphene oxide (GO) on the safety characteristics of 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazinane (RDX) was studied in this work. Graphene oxide was prepared and was investigated to form a composite based on GO-RDX by solvent-antisolvent slurry technique. For comparison, different polymer bonded explosives (PBXs) based on RDX bonded by viton A, fluorel or polymethyl-methacrylate binders were studied and designed as RDX-Viton, RDX-Fluorel and RDX-PMMA respectively. Sensitivities to impact and friction of the presented samples as well as the pure RDX was measured. The ignition temperatures were determined and the activation energies were calculated by using the ignition delay method. Results of x-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope proved that RDX crystals were coated by a thin layer of GO. The impact sensitivity of GO-RDX composite is lower than that of the other studied samples while the friction sensitivity is slightly higher. The ignition temperature of GO-RDX was lower than the other studied samples which indicates that the GO caused accumulation of the decomposition gaseous products and accelerated the decomposition process of RDX. GO is an interesting candidate material to be used for coating the explosive crystals instead of the polymeric matrices