Chemists Build an Explosive Super-Molecule

Lockle writes "A new super explosive has been invented at the University of Chicago. It's based on an existing explosive molecule called "Cubane" but it has oxygen and nitrogen bonded to it for a bigger boom. It's called Octanitrocubane. The news release can be found at Angewandte Chemie International Edition which is a German chemistry magazine (page is in English). More detailed info about Cubane, Octanitrocubane's predecessor, can be found at a site devoted to it."

Comments

Octanitrocubane vs CL-20

[Freshman]

Although Octanitrocubane is 30% more powerful than HMX (high explosive used in detonating nuclear implosion devices), scientists can only make enough to emulate a string of Black Cat firecrackers.

As evident from this page and several other sources:

Polynitrocubances are still at the molecule level of development at this time and it is not expected that multigram quantities will be available anytime in the immediate future.

So for now, we are only seeing a few molecules at a time. However, 50 pounds of CL-20, which is about 20% more powerful than HMX, has been produced, and the government appears to have just finished the testing of warheads with CL-20.

About.com has links and information:

HMX and RDX

Another resource:

Cub ane Applications

Re:What about cyclopropane?

[enmity.]

Cyclopropene, C3H4, has an even higher degree of ring strain resulting from a C=C double bond, but ring strain really only dictates how unstable the compound is, not necessarily how explosive. There is extreme ring strain in both compounds, but neither cyclopropane's 3 C-C bonds and 6 C-H bonds nor cyclopropene's 2 C-C bonds, 1 C=C bond, and 4 C-H bonds don't hold nearly as much energy per molecule to outdo the energy released by breaking the 12 C-C bonds and 8 C-H bonds in cubane. Using a table of bond enthalpies, we can find out how much energy is contained within a mole of each substance:

cyclopropane: 3522 kJ/mol
cyclopropene: 2963 kJ/mol
cubane: 7480 kJ/mol

So cyclopropene is most likely to spontaneously blow up, but releases the least amount of energy per mole; cubane (with bond angles of 90 degrees everywhere) is the most stable of the three but also releases the most energy.

Keep in mind that some of the energy released is used up in forming the products of the reaction, so the values above do not represent the net energy; I'm just too lazy to track down the equations and calculate the delta-H.

enmity.