Highly space-confined ammonium perchlorate in three-dimensional hierarchically ordered porous carbon with improved thermal decomposition properties

Abstract The ability to generate more apparent specific heat release at lower temperatures is the future trend of ammonium perchlorate (AP)-based composite solid propellants. To achieve this goal, the development of highly active catalysts for improving the thermal decomposition properties of AP is essential and challenging. Herein, three-dimensional hierarchically ordered porous carbon (3D HOPC) is employed as catalyst to improve AP thermal decomposition though synthesizing a series of AP/HOPC nanocomposites with different AP loading amount. In these nanocomposites, AP nanocrystals (26.2–69.0 nm) are successfully space-confined into the 3D HOPC scaffold and form the compact interfacial contact. Owing to the synergistic effect of the well-connected 3D hierarchically ordered porous structure, the good electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as the size effect of AP nanocrystals, 3D HOPC demonstrates excellent catalytic activity for AP thermal decomposition in decreasing the high-temperature decomposition temperature from 440.9 to 315.4 °C, lowering the activation energy from 176.4 ± 18.8 kJ/mol to 130.8 ± 5.3 kJ/mol, and unprecedentedly increasing the heat release from 371 ± 11 J/g to 3765 ± 10 J/g. It can be foreseen that 3D HOPC is an attractive catalyst for AP thermal decomposition, which may open new potential for high energy application of carbon-based materials as catalysts for AP-based solid propellants.