Synthesis and properties study of energetic metal complexes based on multifunctional coordinated Tetranitroethane

The tetranitroethane (TNE) as a typical representative of polynitroalkanes, exhibits positive oxygen balance (OB = +22.9 %), high nitrogen content and strong electronegativity. In this work, a series of tetranitroethane-imidazole energetic metal complexes with varying coordination functionalities based on tetranitroethane were synthesized. We cultivated and characterized the synthesized compound crystals. Thermal analysis was conducted on the four synthesized compounds. The apparent activation energy of four compounds was calculated using the Kissinger and Ozawa methods, respectively. The thermal explosion critical temperature and thermodynamic parameters were also determined. Moreover, their sensitivities were tested and the explosion properties of the energetic complexes of tetranitroethane were predicted through the EXPLO5 software. The results indicate that the synthesized nickel hexaimidazole tetranitroethane energetic metal complexes (EMC-2) exhibits moderate explosive performance and demonstrates low sensitivity, making it a promising candidate for a novel green and insensitive energetic material.