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Published on: August 28, 2011
Investigation of Size-Dependent Sublimation Kinetics of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (TNT) Micro-Islands Using In Situ
Yong Joon Lee1, Brandon L Weeks2
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA. yong-joon.lee@ttu.edu.
Abstract:
Kinetic thermal analysis was conducted using in situ atomic force microscopy (AFM) at a temperature range of 15-25 °C to calculate the activation energy of the sublimation of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) islands. The decay of different diameter ranges (600-1600 nm) of TNT islands was imaged at various temperatures isothermally such that an activation energy could be obtained. The activation energy of the sublimation of TNT increases as the diameter of islands increases. It was found that the coarsening and the sublimation rate of TNT islands can be determined by the local environment of the TNT surface. This result demonstrates that a diffusion model cannot be simply applied to "real world" systems for explaining the sublimation behavior and for estimating the coarsening of TNT.
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