Synthesis process of Al/CuOX nano wires from silicon wafer: application in nano energetics

Marine Petrantoni, Ludovic Salvagnac, David Bourrier, Carole Rossi, Kaili Zhang Laboratoire danalyse et darchitecture des systmes, LAAS CNRS, Universit de Toulouse, 31077 Toulouse, France mpetrant@laas.fr, salvagna@laas.fr, bourrier@laas.fr, rossi@laas.fr
Topic : Synthesis and integration of new materials. materials exhibit very powerful reactions and larger reaction rates due to better reactants intimacy. We opted for a MEMS based process to grow nano-wires of CuOx of ~40m in diameter from electroplated copper before thermal evaporation of aluminum on the CuOx nano-wires. This choice presents four main advantages: first, the CuOx/Al is among the most energetic thermites and can deliver up to 4067J/g following a well-known oxidationreduction reaction. Secondly, aluminum and copper are both totally common in semiconductor industry. Thirdly, the thermal evaporation of Al being made in high vacuum, the rate of impurity is very low leading to a good intimacy contact between the oxidizer (CuOx) and fuel (Al). Fourthly, 1Dimension nano-structuring the CuOx/Al layer decreases the diffusion distances between reactants and increases the specific area leading to a more powerful and more reactive material. The thin of nano CuOx/Al energetic layer is then integrated on a micro heater made of Au/Pt/Cr.

Abstract Synthesis of nano-wires energetic material Al/CuOX deposited onto micro heater initiator by thermal annealing of copper (Cu) thin films and thermal evaporation of aluminum (Al). This nano-material was investigated by scanning electron microscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, differential thermal analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry.
I. INTRODUCTION In many application fields such as automotive and armaments, energy represents a capital interest because it is used everywhere: cars, rockets or mobile phone batteries. In this context, energetic materials are a very attractive source of energy. These materials can rapidly release energy under the effect of a stimulus like electrical discharge, high temperature, shock In the military field, the French agency DGA, in collaboration with NEXTER MUNITION, works on improving the properties and the performance of armaments, such as safety and power, and energetic materials could allow achieving this challenge because these materials could be integrated in electronic systems like Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) and represented on-board energy sources to generate gas, heat and power. However, the use of conventional energy materials is not suited to the micro-scale applications because of their formulations (usually powder or liquid), structures, stability, etc.. With the increase miniaturization of system including ignitor, weapon system..., new requirements appeared for energetic materials and raised new materials and technological issues: energetic material with increased or tailored performance to prevent quenching and decreased sensitivity is preferred and easier processing is also desired to get safer handling. Hence a new class of materials is promising: the nano-structured energetic materials. For the synthesis of energetic nano-materials and their integration into micro and nano-systems, several methods have been developed including physical and chemical processing (thermal evaporation, sol-gel) and technologies such as nano-patterning and self-assembly. Some of the highly explored energetic nano-materials are the nano-scale thermite materials also called Metastable Intermolecular Composites (MIC). These composite

II.

EXPERIMENTAL AND RESULTS

A. Description of the heat treatment

Substrate Cu Ti Substrate Cu Ti Substrate CuO Ti Substrate Cleaning and annealing Thermal evaporation

Electroplating

Thermal evaporation Al film on CuO Ti Substrate

Figure 1. Process of the production of the Al/CuO energetic nanomaterial by heat treatment.

30 nm titanium and 50 nm copper are deposited by thermal evaporation on the substrate. Titanium serves as an adhesion layer between copper and substrate. Thin film of copper is used as the conducting layer for the second step: deposition of 1m copper by electroplating at 25C. Then, the wafer is cleaned and heated in static air at 450 C for five hours. This step allows the growth of CuO nano-wires. The nano-wires diameter ranges from 40 to 80 nm. Finally, 1.12 m aluminum is deposited by thermal evaporation on the nano-wires. After aluminum deposition, the nano-wires diameter changes to 150 ~ 250 nm. B. Results

The complete fabrication process is first presented. The as-realized micro initiator is then characterized in ignition and combustion. We get an ignition power and ignition delay of 1.16 W and 0.2 ms respectively. From experimentation, the output energy is calculated to be around 60 mJ. This work has demonstrated the feasibility of the process and the material performances. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was realized thanks to the French military agency DGA, in collaboration with NEXTER MUNITION. REFERENCES
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Figure 2. CuO nano-wires before aluminum deposition.

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Figure 3. CuO nano-wires after aluminum deposition by thermal evaporation.