ATLANTA, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists are using nanometer scale analysis to map the temperature and length-sale factors that make explosives behave the way they do.
Using what they describe as the "world's smallest controlled heat source" -- a tiny atomic-force microscope cantilever -- scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Texas Tech University have developed a new way to study explosives that have nanometer-scale features.
The technique provides new information about such phenomena as melting, evaporation and decomposition of explosives at the smallest length scales. Because the performance of explosives depends heavily on nanometer-scale factors such as crystal size and voids between crystals, they say their research could ultimately lead to safer explosives and better control over how they work.
Dubbed "nanodectonics," the research was described in the Aug. 29 online issue of the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
