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Nitrogen 'Diamond' Created
Sensible Clod writes "Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry have synthesized a new form of nitrogen, with a stucture like that of diamond. This was accomplished by means of a crushing force (>110 GPa) at extremely high temperature (2000 K), of course. The result, according to PhysOrg, is a very hard crystal with a lot of energy stored in it, which leads to the possibility of using it as a non-polluting fuel or high-explosive."
From reading the article, it doesn't sound like they've gotten the material to stay that way at room temperature and pressure yet, so measuring much that stuff would be difficult.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
This seems somewhat like a what a polymerized azide ((N3)- ion)compound would be like, perhaps with many similar properties- I can see the uses as a high explosive, as sodium azide is generally the explosive in airbags- a couple grams of the salt is sufficient to generate over 50L of nitrogen gas quite rapidly. The rearrangement of this network solid into triple-bonded gas molecules should release an enormous amount of energy. I wonder if this is nearly as sensitive to shock as the azides are though.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."