Ni-Al Nanoscale Energetic Materials: Phenomena Involved During the Manufacturing of Bulk Samples by Cold Spray

It has been shown that the cold-gas dynamic spraying process, or simply cold spray, is a suitable technique to manufacture nanoscale energetic materials with high reactivity and low porosity. The current study focuses on the Ni-Al system, for which the reactivity has been increased by an initial mechanical activation achieved by the ball-milling technique, leading to lamellar nanostructured composite particles. The consolidation of this nanoscale energetic material using the cold-gas dynamic spray technique permits to retain the feedstock powder nanoscale structure in the coatings, which in turn retain the high reactivity features of the powder. However, it has been noticed that the stagnation temperature during the spray can lead to partial reaction of the highly reactive feedstock powder, which directly influences the reactivity of the coatings. In this study, different stages of the spray process were investigated: (i) the in-flight behavior of the nanoscale energetic material (powder) at different stagnation temperatures (from 300 to 800 A degrees C); (ii) the substrate-temperature evolution as the function of gas temperature; and (iii) the impact of the powder on the substrate, related to particle's velocity and its influence on the nanostructure of the particles.