TINY METALS, BIG EXPLOSIONS

“Nanotechnology is grab­bing head­lines for its poten­tial in advanc­ing the life sci­ences and com­put­ing research,” Defense Tech pal John Gartner notes in Technology Review. “But the Department of Defense has found another use: a new class of weaponry that uses energy-​​packed nanomet­als to cre­ate pow­er­ful, com­pact bombs.”

Sandia National Laboratories, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are research­ing how to manip­u­late the flow of energy within and between mol­e­cules, a field known as nanoen­er­gen­tics, which enables build­ing more lethal weapons such as “cave-​​buster bombs” that have sev­eral times the det­o­na­tion force of con­ven­tional bombs such as the “daisy cut­ter” or MOAB (mother of all bombs).
Researchers can greatly increase the power of weapons by adding mate­ri­als known as superther­mites that com­bine nanomet­als such as nanoa­lu­minum with metal oxides such as iron oxide, accord­ing to Steven Son, a project leader in the Explosives Science and Technology group at Los Alamos.
“The advan­tage (of using nanomet­als) is in how fast you can get their energy out,” Son says.
Son says that the chem­i­cal reac­tions of superther­mites are faster and there­fore release greater amounts of energy more rapidly.
“Superthermites can increase the (chem­i­cal) reac­tion time by a thou­sand times,” Son says, result­ing in a very rapid reac­tive wave. (Thanks to RC for the tip.)

THERE’S MORE: Howard Lovy has the goods on “death by nano.”

January 25th, 2005 | Bomb Squad | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.