Content overview
Energetic materials – such as explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics – are critical to military, aerospace, and industrial applications. Their performance, stability, and safety are highly dependent on physical and chemical properties, particularly solubility. Precise solubility data is essential for designing stable formulations, such as plastic bonded explosives (PBXs) and nanoenergetics, where interactions with solvents, binders, polymers and additives must be tightly controlled. Equally important is the stability of suspensions in energetic materials, which ensures uniform dispersion, prevents agglomeration, and enhances performance consistency.
This application note highlights case studies demonstrating how Crystal16 streamlines solubility screening and formulation optimization in energetic material research – enabling faster, safer, and more efficient material development.
References
We acknowledge the following published studies, and we are deeply thankful to the authors for their valuable contributions to research on energetic materials utilizing the Crystal16 instrument.
1. Doukkali, M. A., Gauthier, E., Patel, R. B., Stepanov, V., & Hadim, H. (2019). Polymeric Stabilization of Nano‐Scale HMX Suspensions During Wet Milling. Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics, 44(5), 557-563.
2. Bowden, P. R., Shorty, M., Yeager, J. D., Duque, A. L., & Freye, C. E. (2020). A Solubility Comparison of Cyclotetramethylenetetranitramine (HMX) and Potential Mock-HMX Candidates in Solvents Relevant to Slurry Formulating Polymer-Bonded Materials. Journal of Solution Chemistry, 49, 875-884.
3. Yeager, J. D., Woznick, C. S., Thompson, D. G., Duque, A. L., Liu, C., Burch, A. C.,... & Bahr, D. F. (2020). Development of a new density and mechanical mock for HMX (No. LA-UR-18-25764). Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States).
