N. Lease, L. Kay, G. Brown
Feb 27, 2020
Citations
0
Influential Citations
23
Citations
Journal
The Journal of organic chemistry
Abstract
Understanding the factors that affect explosive sensitivity is paramount to the safe handling and development new explosives molecules. Erythritol tetranitrate (ETN) is an explosive that recently has attracted significant attention in the explosives community due to its ease of synthesis and physical properties. Herein we report the synthesis of ETN derivatives using azide, nitramine and nitrate ester functional groups. Impact, spark, and friction sensitivity measurements, computationally calculated explosive properties and crystal structure analysis of the ETN derivatives are reported. Mixing explosive functional groups led to changes in explosive sensitivity, explosive performance as well as physical properties including melting point and physical state at room temperature. Overall, we have demonstrated that combining functional groups can enable the tuning of explosive and physical properties of a molecule. This tune-ability can potentially aid in the development of new explosives in which characteristics are varied to meet certain specifications.