Intrinsically Conductive Polymer Coatings for Reduced ESD Sensitivity

Systems and Materials Research Corporation (SMRC) proposes to reduce the electrostatic sensitivity of nanothermites by modifying the surface with a thin, conformal coating of inherently conductive polymer. Nanothermites or metastable intermolecular composites (MICs) are desired in military weapons systems because the energy output is twice that of traditional explosives, and they can be formulated for a range of energy densities from 10kW/cc to 10GW/cc and detonation velocities from 1- 1500 m/s. Many of these materials have promise as low toxicity high energy materials but have one major barrier to wide scale introduction into future weapons systems: electrostatic discharge (ESD) sensitivity, which makes them far too unstable to be safely handled by the warfighter. If these materials and their composites could pass 250 mJ ESD testing, they would be usable in a variety of higher energy kinetic energy weapons, thermobaric warheads, and shape charges. In these applications, MICs would not only be used as the explosive but also be incorporated into the case materials as a polymer-based structural nanocomposite, thus increasing the total yield of the device.