It turns out that explosive, sol-gel nano-thermites were developed by US government
scientists, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) (Tillitson et al 1998,
Gash et al 2000, Gash et al 2002). These LLNL scientists reported that --
The sol-gel process is very amenable to dip-, spin-, and spray-coating
technologies to coat surfaces. We have utilized this property to dip-coat various
substrates to make sol-gel Fe,O,/ Al / Viton coatings. The energetic coating dries
to give a nice adherent film. Preliminary experiments indicate that films of the
hybrid material are self-propagating when ignited by thermal stimulus
(Gash et al 2002).
"But despite a number of variations in NISTs story, it never
considered explosives or pyrotechnic materials in any of its hypotheses."
Wow, nano-thermites, and nano-thermite coatings, this is interesting, I never heard of this before.