Cocrystals and Salts of Tetrazole-Based Energetic Materials
Janaka C. Gamekkanda, Abhijeet S. Sinha, Christer B. Aakeröy
Abstract
Many energetic materials are unsuitable for practical purposes due to unacceptable sensitivity toward heat, impact, shock, or friction. In addition, chemical reactivity can also be of concern from the point of view of storage and shelf life. In order to develop new solid forms of energetic materials, several tetrazole-based energetic materials with suboptimal thermal and impact sensitivities were subjected to cocrystallization experiments to enhance their properties. Cocrystals and salts of the targets were obtained with several nitrogen- and oxygen-based acceptors. The impact sensitivity and thermal instability were substantially improved with the introduction of coformers. Particularly, the cocrystal 5-(nitrimino)-1H-tetrazole: pyrazine-N,N′-dioxide (D1:A6) has improved the decomposition temperature by 59 °C and was found to be about four times less impact sensitive than the parent explosive.