Towards N-Alkylimidazole Borane-based Hypergolic Fuels.
Over the past few decades, toxic and highly volatile hydrazine derivatives have been the main fuel choices for liquid bipropellants, especially in traditional hypergolic rocket engines. The search for new hypergolic fuels as replacements for hydrazine derivatives is of great interest to researchers. In this study, a series of N-alkylimidazole borane compounds has been synthesized and characterized. Interestingly, these compounds display promising applications as potential hypergolic fuels owing to their excellent physiochemical properties including low melting points, high thermal stability, low viscosities, and unique hypergolic reactivity. Compared with popular hypergolic ionic liquids, the cost-effective and scaling-up advantages of these materials highlight their promising potential as high-performance fuels in liquid bipropellant formulations.
Research Center of Energetic Material Genome Science, Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), Mianyang, 621900, China.
Shi
S
Huang
Research Center of Energetic Material Genome Science, Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), Mianyang, 621900, China.
Wenquan
W
Zhang
Research Center of Energetic Material Genome Science, Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), Mianyang, 621900, China.
Tianlin
T
Liu
Research Center of Energetic Material Genome Science, Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), Mianyang, 621900, China.
Kangcai
K
Wang
School of Material Science and Engineering, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, 612900, China.
Xiujuan
X
Qi
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
Jiaheng
J
Zhang
Research Center of Energetic Material Genome Science, Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), Mianyang, 621900, China.
Qinghua
Q
Zhang
N-alkylimidazole borane; hydrazine; hypergolic fuels; ignition delay time; propellants