Design of a Water‐in‐Oil Emulsion Binder System and Its Application in Inkjet Printing

ABSTRACT The emulsion binder system has been widely used in the inkjet printing technology of energetic materials because of its remarkable advantages. A water‐in‐oil (W/O) binder system was designed using an aqueous polyvinyl alcohol solution as the aqueous phase and fluorocarbon resin ethyl acetate solution as the oil phase. The physicochemical properties of a typical oil‐in‐water (O/W) and the proposed W/O binder systems were characterized. The W/O binder system demonstrated prominent advantages in its water resistance, moisture absorption, and curing rate. To verify the advantages of the W/O binder system in the field of energetic inks, the curing rates of two kinds of inks containing a high melting explosive (HMX) were compared. The results showed that the W/O binder system rapidly solidified and the corresponding ink exhibited a higher curing rate. Thus, the energetic material HMX was suspended in the W/O binder system and inkjet‐printed. The molded sample of HMX‐based W/O suspension ink exhibited excellent surface morphology, internal structure, and mechanical properties compared with the O/W molded sample. An innovative research path toward optimizing the curing rate of emulsion binder systems is presented, thereby improving the mechanical properties and microscale detonation characteristics of inkjet printing samples.