Iron and Copper Doped Zinc Oxide Nanopowders as a Sensitizer of Industrial Energetic Materials to Visible Laser Radiation.

The development of methods ensuring reliable control over explosive chemical reactions is a critical task for the safe and efficient application of energetic materials. Triggering the explosion by laser radiation is one of the promising methods. In this work, we demonstrate a technique of applying the common industrial high explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) as a photosensitive energetic material by adding zinc oxide nanopowders doped with copper and iron.

Achieving tunable chemical reactivity through photo-initiation of energetic materials at metal oxide surfaces.

Known applications of high energy density materials are impressively vast. Despite this, we argue that energetic materials are still underutilized for common energy purposes due to our inability to control explosive chemical reactions releasing energy from these materials. The situation appears paradoxical as energetic materials (EM) possess massive amounts of energy and, hence, should be most appropriate for applications in many energy-intensive processes.