Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Chemistry

Committee Chair/Advisor

Dr. Carlos D. Garcia

Committee Member

Dr. Christopher Chouinard

Committee Member

Dr. Justin Talbot

Committee Member

Dr. Jorge Barroso

Abstract

This study reports on the incorporation an extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) machine learning strategy tailored to identifying potential high-energy, insensitive explosive deep eutectic solvents. 1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethylene (FOX-7) was investigated as the explosive of interest in our eutectic modeling. The resulting predictions highlighted a wide range of binary compositions demonstrating significant depression from the FOX-7 melting temperature with >70% probabilities of formation. Subsequent computational investigation into select mixtures provided underlying stabilization energies and optimized mixture geometries, which were then assessed experimentally with near simulant compounds oxalyldihydrazide and 1-methyl-3- nitroguanidine replacing FOX-7.

Experimental results with these chosen simulants did not demonstrate classical eutectic behavior. Despite the lack of DES formation, these results yeild valuable insights for refining methodologies in the design of energeti eutectic systems. Although the selected simulants share similarities with FOX-7, they exhibit key deviations in critical physicochemical properties that may hinder their ability to reproduce the predicted eutectic behavior. Accordingly, direct experimental evaluation of the predicted systems with FOX-7 is justified and recommended for future study.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.