Synthesis and performance of a novel poly-nitrogen compound 1, 1'-azobis-1, 2, 3-triazole

1, 1'-Azobis-1, 2, 3-triazole (2), a novel poly-nirogen compound with stable N8 structure (eight directly linked nitrogen atoms) and photochromism, has been synthesized from 1-amino-1, 2, 3-triazole (1) by the oxidative coupling reaction (sodium dichloroisocyanurate (SDCI) as the oxidant) and its structure were characterized by IR, Raman, ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, MS and elementary analysis techniques. 1H-1, 2, 3-triazole (3) was separated as the by-product and the decomposed mechanism of 2 were presumed. The structure of 2 was also estimated by the density functional theory (DFT) method based on B3LYP/6-31G^* basis set. By the theoretical results and experimental data, introduction of azo group into single-ring poly-nitrogen compounds can efficiently increase their density and heat of formation, by comparison with the performance of 3, the density and heat of formation of 2 increase 37.6% and 48.8% respectively; also the performance of different types of azobis-triazoles was compared, and the results indicated that the larger the number of directly linked nitrogen atoms, the more excellent it's performance is, e.g. the density and the heat of formation of 2 increased by 5.6% and 51.0% respectively compared with 3, 3'-azobis-1, 2, 3-triazole (4).