Preparation and Sensitivity Property of Nitrocellulose/Silica Composite with Silica Gel as Coating Layer

Abstract The safety performance of propellants is one of the important issues that must be considered in their application and it is mainly determined by their sensitivity. Thus, the reduction of the sensitivity exhibited by propellants is an effective measure to improve their safety. The sensitivity of traditional propellants is partly resulted from nitrocellulose, and preparation and application of less sensitive nitrocellulose can reduce their sensitivity. However, the nitrocellulose has gained little development from the invention on the sensitivity research. The surface of nitrocellulose was grafted with the silica gel by sol‐gel method to prepare an insensitive nitrocellulose in the paper. The product was characterized by FT‐IR, SEM, XRD, XPS, TGA, DSC and sensitivity tests. Results show that the nitrocellulose surface is coated with the silica gel successfully, and its crystal form is not affected by silica gel. Furthermore, the impact sensitivities of NC/SiO 2 composites are reduced significantly in comparison with pure nitrocellulose.