Exploring explosive properties at the nano level

Interesting stuff. It seems what makes stuff go bang, and how it goes bang, is highly dependent on nono-level properties. Size of voids, crystal size and such. Explosives that would only work if your detonator had the right "key" would be very cool.

physorg.com

Using nanometer scale analysis techniques and quantities too small to explode, researchers have mapped the temperature and length-sale factors that make energetic materials – otherwise known as explosives – behave the way they do...

... "Ideally, we want to control the nanoscale properties of energetic materials to understand the physics at short length scales and make the materials safer," he added. "Perhaps we could engineer features into a material like PETN that would make it sensitive to a certain initiation stimulus. If the correct stimulus were not used, then the material would no longer behave like an explosive." ...