• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.77-87
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• 2006

Micro- or nano-size particles are required to improve the combustion efficiency and stability in the case of solid explosives and propellants. The micro-structural properties of an energetic material strongly influence the combustion and explosion behavior. However, the traditional size reduction techniques, including milling, are not suitable for production of ultra-fine size particles. As an alternative to the traditional techniques, various re-crystallization processes based on supercritical fluids have recently been proposed. Supercritical fluids are fluids at temperatures and pressures above their critical point. In principle, they do not give problems of solvent contamination as they are completely released from the solute when the decompression occurs. Rapid Expansion Supercritical Solutions(RESS) and Supercritical Anti-Solvent Process(GAS/SAS) are representatives of a nano-size particle formation process of energetic materials using supercritical fluids. In this work, various fine particle formation processes using supercritical fluids are discussed and the results are presented.