Assembly of Tetrazolylfuroxan Organic Salts: Multipurpose Green Energetic Materials with High Enthalpies of Formation and Excellent Detonation Performance

Abstract

A series of highly energetic organic salts comprising a tetrazolylfuroxan anion, explosophoric azido or azo functionalities, and nitrogen-rich cations were synthesized by simple, efficient, and scalable chemical routes. These energetic materials were fully characterized by IR and multinuclear NMR (¹ H, ¹³ C, ¹⁴ N, ¹⁵ N) spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Additionally, the structure of an energetic salt consisting of an azidotetrazolylfuroxan anion and a 3,6,7-triamino-7H-[1,2,4]triazolo[4,3-b][1,2,4]triazolium cation was confirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The synthesized compounds exhibit good experimental densities (1.57-1.71 g cm^-3 ), very high enthalpies of formation (818-1363 kJ mol^-1 ), and, as a result, excellent detonation performance (detonation velocities 7.54-8.26 kms^-1 and detonation pressures 23.4-29.3 GPa). Most of the synthesized energetic salts have moderate sensitivity toward impact and friction, which makes them promising candidates for a variety of energetic applications. At the same time, three compounds have impact sensitivity on the primary explosives level (1.5-2.7 J). These results along with high detonation parameters and high nitrogen contents (66.0-70.2 %) indicate that these three compounds may serve as potential environmentally friendly alternatives to lead-based primary explosives.