Poly (Vinyl Ferrocene)/Hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene (PVF/HTPB) blend as a Catalyst: Preparation, Characterization and Comparison

 Among the burning rate catalysts (BRCs), ferrocene-based ones have shown better performance; but show volatility problem. Therefore, the use of ferrocene derivatives in order to make compatible with hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) prepolymer, is a novel trend which is recently interested in the related researches.

 In this research, at first, vinyl ferrocene monomer (VFM) were in-situ homopolymerized to prepare poly (vinyl ferrocene) (PVF)in the presence of hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) prepolymer at three different conditions(with and without BPO as initiator and different amounts of VFM).Then, blend of PVF/HTPB were characterized using FT-IR, 1HNMR and GPC analyzes. In the second part, energetic composites containing PVF/HTPB blend were prepared and thermal properties of prepared samples investigated and compared with energetic composites containing conventional catalysts using TGA.

The GPC results showed that the main peak was larger and wider due to the increase in the average molecular weight of PVF/HTPB blend. Comparison of thermal analysis showed that energetic composites based on PVF/HTPB blend catalyst perform better than common catalysts and more reduces the AP decomposition temperature. PVF/HTPB blend act as a potential BRC in energetic composites in which migration problem reduce due to in-situ blending of VFM to HTPB.