Constructing interparticle hotspots through cracking silver nanoplates for laser initiation of explosives

Abstract As a safe, reliable, and strongly electromagnetic resistant initiation method, laser initiation shows great promise in military blasting applications. Many obstacles exist when delivering a high-energy laser through optical fibers, directly influencing the energetic explosives under low-initiation conditions. Herein, we developed silver nanoplates as a laser energy absorber to reduce the laser initiation threshold and delay time. During the growth process of the silver seed nanoplates, mechanical disturbance was applied to provoke the nanoplates to develop more internal hotspots. Meanwhile, in ultraviolet visible near-infrared (UV–VIS-NIR) testing, the absorption peak was regulated to 808 nm by tailoring the size of the nanoplates. Results showed that the maximum temperature of the cracking nanoplates could reach 100 °C within 10 s, under the irradiation of an 808 nm diode laser at a power density of 1 W·cm−2. Through their use as a laser energy absorber, the silver nanoplates can effectively reduce the initiation threshold of cyclotrimethy lenetrinitramine (RDX) by 58.33% and reduce the delay time of B/KNO3 by 51.00%. This result provides potential applications for initiation energetic explosives at low laser energy.