Customizing the appearance of sparks with binary metal alloys

Long-flying sparks are an essential part of several pyrotechnic effects. Unfortunately, and in contrast to colored flames, the color space of sparks is basically limited to the black-body curve. With low-boiling metals, vapor phase combustion and bright colorful flashes are achievable. In 1999, alloys of rare-earth elements have been proposed for colorful spark genera-tion. To the best of our knowledge, here we present the first investigation of such alloys to change the color of sparks be-yond the black-body limit. Alloys consisting of >65 at.-% of a brightly emitting and low-boiling metal and a carrier metal allow achieving long-flying deeply colored sparks. Besides the color, branching of sparks is crucial for the visual appear-ance. Rare-earth metals were found to promote branching of different alloys. Finally, fountains ejecting golden/green sparks based on a stable eutectic Yb-Cu alloy and continuously branching sparks based on Nd2Fe14B are presented.

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