Radiation-induced decomposition of PETN and TATB under extreme conditions.

We conducted a series of experiments investigating decomposition of secondary explosives PETN and TATB at varying static pressures and temperatures using synchrotron radiation. As seen in our earlier work, the decomposition rate of TATB at ambient temperature slows systematically with increasing pressure up to at least 26 GPa but varies little with pressure in PETN at ambient temperature up to 15.7 GPa, yielding important information pertaining to the activation complex volume in both cases. We also investigated the radiation-induced decomposition rate as a function of temperature at ambient pressure and 26 GPa for TATB up to 403 K, observing that the decomposition rate increases with increasing temperature as expected. The activation energy for the TATB reaction at ambient temperature was experimentally determined to be 16 +/- 3 kJ/mol.