Flash ignition and application of materials: A review

This article provides a detailed account for the development of flash ignition in the past years, and reviews the research status of flash ignition in new carbon nanomaterials, metals and metallic oxides nanomaterials, inorganic nonmetallic nanomaterials, energetic materials, and synthetic materials. Furthermore, this review describes the advancement of this novel ignition method in the application of fuel ignition. Flash ignition has low energy consumption and small ignition delay time, and its distributed ignition characteristics enables it quickly ignite a large area of fuel, which has quite favorable advantages in the field of ignition utilization. In this paper, the photothermal effect, photoacoustic effect and combustion mechanism of the materials produced by flash ignition are provided. Additionally, the important parameters under the application conditions such as minimum ignition energy (MIE) are reviewed. The application of heat engines using flash ignition as ignition method and the development of the light source are also introduced. Finally, the future research directions of flash ignition are given.