This research aimed to investigate the optimum conditions for modification of thermal decomposition properties of ammonium perchlorate (AP) particles through microencapsulation techniques. A solvent/non-solvent method has been used to perform microencapsulation of AP particles with some polymer-coating agents such as viton A and nitrocellulose (NC). Differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetry, and scanning electron microscopy have been exploited to investigate the thermal properties, heat of decomposition, and coating morphology of pure and coated samples. The preliminary results revealed that AP microparticle could be effectively coated with both NC and viton, but the latter significantly and unfavorably attenuated heat of decomposition of AP so NC was chosen as an appropriate coating agent for modifica- tion of thermal properties of AP. The thermal analysis of NC-coated samples, prepared at optimized coating condi- tions, showed that its first stage decomposition temperature increases about 12 °C with respect to uncoated sample and reaches to 305 °C. Also, the apparent activation energy (E), AG+, AH , and AS' of the decomposition processes of the pure and coated AP particles at the optimum conditions were obtained by non-isothermal methods that proposed by ASTM and Ozawa. Finally, the results of this investi- gation showed that microencapsulation of AP particles with fibrous NC enhance its heat of decomposition (~120 J g-1) with no obvious effect on kinetic parameters and thermal decomposition temperature.
