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Analytical Chemistry

Cocrystallization Improves Explosives

Energetic Materials: Method for combining compounds in solid phase leads to enhancements in products’ chemical stability, shock sensitivity, and explosive force

by Mitch Jacoby
April 27, 2015 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 93, Issue 17

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Credit: J. Am. Chem. Soc.
Cocrystallizing diacetone diperoxide and trihalotrinitrobenzenes (trichloro analog shown in model) enhances the explosives’ properties.
This image depicts the crystal structure of a cocrystal of diacetone diperoxide (DADP) and trichlorotrinitrobenzene.
Credit: J. Am. Chem. Soc.
Cocrystallizing diacetone diperoxide and trihalotrinitrobenzenes (trichloro analog shown in model) enhances the explosives’ properties.

Cocrystallizing pairs of explosive organic compounds is a viable route to improving the compounds’ chemical stability, shock sensitivity, and other properties that determine an explosive’s usefulness in applications, according to a study (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b00661). Acetone peroxides are easy to prepare and inexpensive, but they tend to be unstable—exploding unpredictably—and low in density, a property associated with low explosive power. Those factors limit their usefulness as commercial explosives. The University of Michigan’s Adam J. Matzger and coworkers may have a way to bypass those limitations. The team formed cocrystals in one-to-one ratios between diacetone diperoxide (DADP) and three trihalotrinitrobenzenes—the trichloro (TCTNB), tribromo (TBTNB), and triiodo (TITNB) analogs. They found that cocrystallization increased DADP’s density and stability. They also found that, compared with DADP, the cocrystal DADP-TCTNB was just as sensitive to impact yet less volatile and higher in density. In contrast, DADP-TITNB exhibited much lower impact sensitivity than either DADP or TITNB, showing for the first time that an energetic cocrystal can be less sensitive to impact than its pure components.

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