A novel fluorine-free design of superhydrophobic nano-Al/NiO (II) energetic film with promising exothermic performance

It is still a big challenge to design self-protected energetic films or coatings due to the performance degradation under wet conditions, even underwater using environmentally friendly techniques. Thus, this paper firstly proposed an environment-protecting method to fabricate a superhydrophobic nano-Al/NiO energetic film with uniformly distributed structures and high purity via an improved electrophoretic assembly and stearic acid modification. The nano-Al/NiO energetic film with a high contact angle (CA) of 166 degrees displayed superior anti-wettability and self-cleaning ability, and the outstanding exothermic performance of product keeps almost sta-ble even after 10 complete immersion cycles, demonstrating the promising practicality. Our design provide a novel strategy for substantially extending safety, flexibility and adaptability of functional energetic surfaces in real industrial applications.