Pressure-Induced In Situ Construction of P-CO/HNIW Explosive Composites with Excellent Laser Initiation and Detonation Performance.

Laser initiation is a popular research topic in the energetic community. Particularly, the direct ignition of secondary explosives by laser ignitors is considered to be an advanced strategy for enhancing safety and promoting the miniaturization of weapons. Here, to improve the laser sensitivity of secondary explosives, P-CO synthesized under high pressure was employed as a coating for HNIW owing to its laser sensitivity and excellent energetic properties. In this operation, HNIW underwent an obvious isostructural phase transition from the ε-phase to the γ'-phase in the pressure range of 1.0-4.8 GPa. Subsequently, sub-nanoscale HNIW-based composites were formed when CO in situ polymerized to P-CO on the surfaces of HNIW at 5.1 GPa. This HNIW-based composite could be ignited at a much lower laser power (0.49-0.65 W) compared with pure HNIW (2.75-2.98 W) when excited by an Nd:YAG laser with a wavelength of 1064 nm. Additionally, the DFT calculations demonstrated that the arrangement density between HNIW and P-CO was significantly enhanced as the pressure increased. Thus, the introduction of advanced materials into explosive formulations through high-pressure technology is a novel and feasible strategy for developing multipurpose energetic materials.