Beware – Silane gas is pyrophoric, I.E. explodes on contact with oxygen. It is
also toxic too.
Silane is nasty, NASTY, stuff; and never recommended for DIY.
Silane stories:
Fill a 2-3” water balloon with silane, and pop the balloon (3 feet away);
sounds like a M-80, and feels like it too. 😉
A single silane cylinder with a leak; removed an entire 1000sqft 2nd story
laboratory, from a top of the building I worked in during late 80’s. This was
a newly built professional chemical/biological lab facility, built as blocks
of self-contained, fully isolated concrete safety boxes for each lab;
surrounded by employee cubicles on outside of lab core. After the explosion,
there was nothing left of the top corner of the building. All of the adjacent
labs were damaged as well. Thankfully, explosion happened several hours after
everyone left for the day; and janitorial staff was cleaning in another
building at time.
Indoor storage of silane gas for semiconductor processing, is generally done
with a solid concrete/steel vault like blast cabinet box with open top to vent
the blast pressure. Bottle change is a scary affair; requiring nitrogen
purge, and proper PPE. One fine day at work: a pallet rack of silane storage
bottles in a cabinet, had a valve leak that blew up. The rain cover structure
for blast cabinet was found in a parking lot ¼ mile away. The concrete/steel
blast box was destroyed and had to be replaced too. Blast registered on
University seismographs 30 miles away.
Most of the liquid silicon derivative’s available are flammable liquids,
reasonably stable with oxygen; and only go boom when heated dramatically above
boiling point and mixed with catalyst. IMHO would be better just using a known
poisonous catalyst instead.
YMMV
Cheers,
Jim
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
Bruno Berger ("bruno.berger")
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2023 11:04 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Hypergolics with N2O?
Does anybody know about chemicals which are hypergolic with N2O? I know TEA and
TEB are, but that's nasty stuff. Someone told me that Silane (SiH4 and the
heavier molecules) may be hypergolic as well. That's also nasty stuff, but more
available that TEA. It might be soluble in conventional fuels like
Ethane/Ethene/Propane etc. But I haven't found much about the hypergolic
behavior...
Cheers Bruno