Electrospray Formed Metal Iodate-Based Energetic Composites and Their Application As Biocidal Agents

Biological weapons, such as those employing anthrax, pose a considerable potential public threat. Bacterial spores, in particular, are highly stress resistant and cannot be completely killed by common bactericides such as iodophor. This paper reports metal-iodate-based thermites which could effectively kill spores through a thermal and chemical combined mechanism. In general, metal iodates act as a strong oxidizer to participate in formulating high reactive thermite mixtures, while containing high mass loadings of iodine (e.g. in the case of bismuth iodate >50 wt. % of iodine). This resultant thermite reaction generates both high-temperature and high-pressure with the added benefit of the release of iodine as a longer lived bactericide. This work shows that metal iodate and aluminum nanoparticles, when intimately assembled into micro-sized nanothermites by an electrospray process, show significantly improved reactivity and sporicidal performance over conventional metal oxide-based thermites.