A graphene titanium dioxide nanocomposite (GTNC): one pot green synthesis and its application in a solid rocket propellant

Abstract

A green process was developed for a graphene–titanium dioxide nanocomposite (GTNC) synthesis by dispersing titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanoparticles and graphene nano-sheets (GNSs) in ethanol via ultrasonication followed by microwave irradiation. The synthesized GTNC was well characterized by various tools: viz. XRD, HRTEM, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. Also, Simultaneous Thermal Analysis (STA) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) techniques have been employed to study the enhancement of the catalytic activity of the GTNC for the decomposition of Ammonium perchlroate (AP). The GTNC with 5 wt% in AP was found to be a highly effective catalyst for the AP decomposition. The decomposition temperature decreases from 412.87 °C to 372.50 °C and ΔH increases from 2053 to 3903 J g⁻¹. Furthermore, the GTNC was identified as an effective burn rate enhancer (i.e. combustion catalyst) for an AP based composite propellant for solid rocket propellants as confirmed by STA, DSC, activation energy calculations and burn rate measurements. The results show that the burn rate of the propellant increases by 24% for the TiO₂ nanoparticle based composition compared to the base composition, whereas a significant increase of 50% is achieved in the presence of the GTNC. Hence, the performance is improved significantly for the solid rocket propellant.