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octaazacubane
Sign in to saveAlso known as cubaazane, nitrogen cubane, N8
Octaazacubane is a hypothetical explosive allotrope of nitrogen with formula N8, whose molecules have eight atoms arranged into a cube. (By comparison, nitrogen usually occurs as the diatomic molecule N2.) It can be regarded as a cubane-type cluster, where all eight corners are nitrogen atoms bonded along the edges. It is predicted to be a metastable molecule, in which despite the thermodynamic instability caused by bond strain, and the high energy of the N–N single bonds, the molecule remains kinetically stable for reasons of orbital symmetry.
Chemical data
- Formula
- N8
- Molecular weight
- 112.05 g/mol
- IUPAC name
- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-octazapentacyclo[4.2.0.02,5.03,8.04,7]octane
- SMILES
- N12N3N4N1N5N2N3N45
- InChIKey
- QKLIVIBCUWQEME-UHFFFAOYSA-N
- XLogP
- 1.7
- Polar surface area
- 25.9 Ų
- H-bond donors
- 0
- H-bond acceptors
- 8
- Formal charge
- 0
via PubChem
Wikidata facts
- Mass
- 112.024592
Show 4 more facts
- canonical SMILES
- N12N3N4N1N5N4N3N52
- chemical formula
- N₈
- different from
- octanitrocubane
- Commons category
- Octaazacubane
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- Explosive and fuel
- See also
- References
- External links
Octaazacubane is a hypothetical explosive allotrope of nitrogen with formula N8, whose molecules have eight atoms arranged into a cube. (By comparison, nitrogen usually occurs as the diatomic molecule N2.) It can be regarded as a cubane-type cluster, where all eight corners are nitrogen atoms bonded along the edges. It is predicted to be a metastable molecule, in which despite the thermodynamic instability caused by bond strain, and the high energy of the N–N single bonds, the molecule remains kinetically stable for reasons of orbital symmetry.
==Explosive and fuel== Octaazacubane is predicted to have an energy density (assuming decomposition into N2) of 22.9 MJ/kg, which is over 5 times the standard value of TNT. It has therefore been proposed (along with other exotic nitrogen allotropes) as an explosive, and as a component of high performance rocket fuel. Its velocity of detonation is predicted to be 15,000 m/s, much (48.5%) more than octanitrocubane, the fastest known nonnuclear explosive.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “octaazacubane” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.