A method for fast safety screening of explosives in terms of crystal packing and molecular stability

The effect of nitro groups on N2 extrusion from aromatic azide-based energetic materials

ortho nitroaromatic azides extrude N₂ through cyclization to a benzofuroxan derivative. DFT calculations show that steric and electronic factors influence the activation barriers for extrusion in energetic materials.

Trigger bond analysis of nitroaromatic energetic materials using wiberg bond indices

The identification of trigger bonds, bonds that break to initiate explosive decomposition, using computational methods could help direct the development of novel, "green" and efficient high energy density materials (HEDMs). Comparing bond densities in energetic materials to reference molecules using Wiberg bond indices (WBIs) provides a relative scale for bond activation (%ΔWBIs) to assign trigger bonds in a set of 63 nitroaromatic conventional energetic molecules. Intramolecular hydrogen bonding interactions enhance contributions of resonance structures that strengthen, or deactivate, the CNO₂ trigger bonds and reduce the sensitivity of nitroaniline-based HEDMs. In contrast, unidirectional hydrogen bonding in nitrophenols strengthens the bond to the hydrogen bond acceptor, but the phenol lone pairs repel and activate an adjacent nitro group. Steric effects, electron withdrawing groups and greater nitro dihedral angles also activate the CNO₂ trigger bonds. %ΔWBIs indicate that nitro groups within an energetic molecule are not all necessarily equally activated to contribute to initiation. %ΔWBIs generally correlate well with impact sensitivity, especially for HEDMs with intramolecular hydrogen bonding, and are a better measure of trigger bond strength than bond dissociation energies (BDEs). However, the method is less effective for HEDMs with significant secondary effects in the solid state. Assignment of trigger bonds using %ΔWBIs could contribute to understanding the effect of intramolecular interactions on energetic properties. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.