Nanofoil Corporation

Indium Corporation of America

Ellen Heian

Omar Knio

Timothy Ryan Rude

Michael V Brown

Jesse E Newson

Alan Duckham

Jai S Subramanian

Timothy P Weihs

David Van Heerden

Ronald L Spraker

Etienne Besnoin

Ramzi Vincent

Yuping Lin

Somasundaram Valliappan

Applicants have discovered that electrostatic discharge (ESD) may, in some circumstances, result in current densities sufficient to ignite unprotected reactive composite materials. They have further discovered that a reactive composite material (RCM) can be protected from ESD ignition without adversely affecting the desirable properties of the RCM by the application of conducting and/or insulating materials at appropriate locations on the RCM. Thus ESD-protected RCM structures can be designed for such sensitive applications as ignition of propellants, generation of light bursts, and structural materials for equipment that may require controlled self-destruction.

Reactive composite material structures with electrostatic discharge protection and applications thereof

A method for joining component bodies of material over bonding regions of large dimensions by disposing a plurality of substantially contiguous sheets of reactive composite materials between the bodies and adjacent sheets of fusible material. The contiguous sheets of the reactive composite material are operatively connected by an ignitable bridging material so that an igniting reaction in one sheet will cause an igniting reaction in the other. An application of uniform pressure and an ignition of one or more of the contiguous sheets of reactive composite material causes an exothermic thermal reaction to propagate through the bonding region, fusing any adjacent sheets of fusible material and forming a bond between the component bodies.

Method for fabricating large dimension bonds using reactive multilayer joining

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Cockeysville, MD, United States of America

Ellen Heian