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Updated: Aug 4, 2025

Flame Experiments at the Advanced Light Source: New Insights into Soot Formation Processes
Published on: May 26, 2014
Splicing oxygen-rich multidentate ligands and characteristic metals to construct flame colorants: abundant structures
Wen-Shuai Dong1, Hao-Zheng Mei1, Jun-Qing Yang2
1State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, P. R. China. zjgbit@bit.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Tetranitroethane (TNE), an energetic compound with high-nitrogen (N%, 26.7%) and oxygen (O%, 60.9%) content, is deprotonated by alkali and alkaline earth metal bases to form the corresponding metal salts of TNE which are characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and single crystal X-ray diffraction. All the prepared energetic metal salts show excellent thermal stabilities, and the decomposition temperatures of EP-3, EP-4, and EP-5 are higher than 250 °C, due to the numerous coordination bonds of the complexes. Furthermore, the energy of formation of the nitrogen-rich salts were calculated utilizing heat of combustion. The detonation performances were calculated with the EXPLO5 software, and the impact and friction sensitivities were determined. EP-7 shows excellent energy performance (P = 30.0 GPa, VD = 8436 m s-1). EP-3, EP-4, EP-5, and EP-8 are more sensitive to mechanical stimulation. These alkali and alkaline earth metal salts of TNE show good monochromaticity by atomic emission spectroscopy (visible light), and may be used as potential flame colorants in pyrotechnics.
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