A facile route to synthesize cubic gauche polymeric nitrogen

TL;DR

This paper reports the first successful synthesis of cubic gauche polymeric nitrogen (cg-N) at ambient conditions using a simple thermal chemical process, enabling potential scalable production of high energy density materials.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, facile method for synthesizing cg-N at ambient conditions, which was previously unachievable.

Findings

Successfully synthesized cg-N at ambient conditions.

Identified Raman signature confirming cg-N structure.

Demonstrated potential for scalable production of nitrogen-based materials.

Abstract

In this work, the long-sought cg-N with N-N single bond has been synthesized for the first time by a thermal-driven-only chemical route at ambient conditions. The successful synthesis of cg-N was achieved by first creating a solution of azides, which was then pretreated under vacuum conditions. Following the pretreatment, the resultant concentrated azide was heated at temperatures ranging from 260{\deg}C to 330{\deg}C for a reaction time of 3 hours, ultimately leading to the formation of cg-N. The emergent intense Raman peak characterized of cg-N provides solid evidence that the double bonded nitrogen-nitrogen transforms into a single bond form, which agrees well with cg-N structure. To date, this is the only work achieving the quantity of cg-N synthesized at ambient conditions by a facile route that can be further developed for the scalable synthesis and applications of polymerized nitrogen-based materials as high energy density materials.