Azidoazide Azide is the single most explosive chemical ever created by man, and it absolutely blows my mind !
Azidoazide Azide is a "high-nitrogren energetic material", and was developed in 2010 by a team of german scientists in collaboration with the U.S. Army, who described their work as "exciting"... If you know much about chemistry, and how nitrogen acts, the molecule on the right looks anything but "exciting". In fact, "AA" is something most chemists would RUN from. This molecule is highly unstable, and will explode. It's so explosive, that researchers have been unable to measure just how explosive it really is...
This post is the first of a mini-series, all about the most amazing and dangerous chemicals known to man! Grab a snack, kick your feet up, and get ready to learn about some Super Cool Science S#!t!
This is all Nitrogen's fault...
Nitrogen is a fickle little element. It wants nothing more than to triple bond with other Nitrogen atoms. Because of this triple bond, dinitrogen (N2) is actually very stable. When two Nitrogen atoms come together like this, only things like lightning can force them to give up their shared outer shell of electrons.
When Nitrogen within a molecule isn't triple bonded, it can collapse into Nitrogen gas, releasing a large amount of energy in the process. AA is made up of two carbon atoms, and fourteen Nitrogen atoms.
The scary part is when you realize that none of those Nitrogen atoms are triple bonded...
All that Nitrogen is angry. It's pent up. It wants so badly to rip this bear trap of a molecule to shreds, so it can come together with it's kin that are so close, yet so far away. As soon as it gets a chance, this whole thing is going to collapse in a fantastic manner. To say this thing is sensitive is an egregious understatement.
In his blog about why he won't work with this monster, Derek Lowe explains how the researchers weren't even able to measure it, quoting:
Due to their behavior during the process of synthesis, it was obvious that the sensitivities (of these compounds) will be not less than extreme. . .
The sensitivity of C2N14 is beyond our capabilities of measurement. The smallest possible loadings in shock and friction tests led to explosive decomposition. . .
They set out to synthesize more powerful high-nitrogen energetic materials, and man, they succeeded! Without wasting piles of money they don't have on piles of new equipment, they can't even test it, because it's just going to destroy any sensors that get close enough to measure it... Kudos to them, though, as they gave it the good old college try.
Many spectrometers were harmed in the making of this experiment...
What makes AA explode?
Anything.... everything... and nothing at all... Here's a short list of the stimuli that caused this beast to explode in the lab...
- It blew up within a solution.
- It exploded upon any attempt to touch or move it.
- It blew up when they put it in the spectrometer, and when they turned on the spectrometer
- It even exploded sitting in a climate controlled, dark isolation chamber...
I'll leave you with a video from the Youtube channel SciShow that explains a little bit more about Azidoazide azide (in a much more entertaining way than I do...), and other incredibly dangerous chemicals. This video was in fact the inspiration for this entire mini-series, so if you like it, keep an eye out for more Super Cool Science S#!t about the most ridiculous chemicals man has ever encountered!
References:
- libretexts.org - Chemistry of Nitrogen
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/asia.201100632?referrer_access_token=5JxAUIntEFRCgYoihJKLOE4keas67K9QMdWULTWMo8P_oK7DfhkejXArY58N_JbIejT8X4ujn4y8SaoAeNqCTgGg59n5go8u4gra8jBjPCJvEzV4arpCiI6C94r7Y7uh
- http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/01/09/things_i_wont_work_with_azidoazide_azides_more_or_less
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