Combustion and catalytic performance of metal-free heat-resistant energetic polymeric materials.

• Four novel HEPMs are prepared via the facile method. • HEPMs can be ignited without any additives under the combustion tests. • HEPMs have been first proposed for metal-free catalytic performance of AP. Energetic polymeric materials play vital roles in energetic materials fields to improve the comprehensive performances of rocket propellants and PBXs. Herein, four N-di/trinitrobenzene based heat-resistance energetic polymeric materials were synthesized via two facile approaches and fully characterized using FTIR, NMR, SEM and XRD. The combustion properties of energetic polymers were tested and recorded on a high-speed camera, physicochemical and energetic properties were also investigated. The results show that as-synthesized energetic polymers not only exhibit excellent thermal stabilities (the highest exothermic decomposition temperature of 336.7 °C) superior to those of GAP, poly(GLYN), triaminoguanidine-glyoxal polymer (TAGP) and graphene oxide (GO), but also produce great detonation and compatibility performance. In addition, the energetic polymer samples can be directly ignited without any additives. Worth noting that, we reported the thermal decomposition catalysis of AP by non-metallic energetic polymers as the first example, suggesting they can be potentially developed into metal-free catalysts replacing heavy metal-based energetic coordination polymers (ECPs) or energetic metal-organic frameworks (EMOFs). In summary, as-prepared energetic polymeric materials represent great application potential in solid rocket propellants and PBXs due to their promising catalytic effect, excellent chemical and physical performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]