Facile and Efficient Preparation Aluminum/Polytetrafluoroethylene Composite Microspheres with Enhanced Energy Release

Aluminum/polytetrafluoroethylene (Al/PTFE) fuels are widely used in solid propellants and explosives. In this work, Al/PTFE high-energy microspheres are prepared for the first time by chitosan emulsion cross-linking. By adjusting the mass of chitosan, the properties of high-energy microspheres such as heat of reaction, flame propagation, and combustion efficiency are systematically examined. Comparison shows that high-energy microspheres with 2% chitosan content have the best overall performance. The scanning electron microscopy shows that the microsphere particles have no obvious defects on the rounded surface. Compared to physically mixed samples, the differential scanning calorimetry results show that the heat release is 13984 J g⁻¹ (increased by 27.9%), it has the largest combustion flame area, with an ignition delay of 3.0 s (reduced by 38.8%) and a calorific value of combustion in oxygen of 17287 J g⁻¹ (increased by 20.2%). This method can be promoted and applied to the preparation of other composite microspheres for high-energy fuels, which has a broad application prospect.