Toward the Development of Aluminum Cluster-Containing Materials for Propulsion Applications

Aluminum cluster-containing materials offer several potentially important advantages over current aluminum particle-based propulsion technologies. Both theory and experiments suggest that the preparation of such materials may be feasible. During our recent AFOSR grant, by utilizing anion photoelectron spectroscopic techniques, we have investigated salts composed of alkali cations and multiply-charged aluminum cluster anions, magnesium-aluminum clusters, gold-aluminum clusters, aluminum monovalency in Al7-, aluminum hydride polymer anions, hydrogen atom selectivity in Al13H-, magic numbers in aluminum hydride anions, and gallium nitride clusters. Nine publications and two PhD theses have also resulted from this work.
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