One Pot Synthesis of Cubic Gauche Polymeric Nitrogen

TL;DR

This paper reports a simple ambient-condition synthesis of cubic gauche polymeric nitrogen from sodium azide, enabling scalable production of high-energy-density nitrogen materials.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, low-energy route for synthesizing cubic gauche polymeric nitrogen at ambient conditions using sodium azide.

Findings

Successful synthesis of cg-N at ambient conditions.

Raman spectra confirm formation of N-N single bonds.

Method offers potential for scalable production.

Abstract

The long sought cubic gauche polymeric nitrogen (cg-N) consisting of N-N single bonds has been synthesized by a simple route using sodium azide as a precursor at ambient conditions. The recrystallization process was designed to expose crystal faces with low activation energy that facilitates initiating the polymeric reaction at ambient conditions. The azide was considered as a precursor due to the low energy barrier in transforming double bonded N=N to single bonded cg-N. Raman spectrum measurements detected the emerging vibron peaks at 635 cm-1 for the polymerized sodium azide samples, demonstrating the formation of cg-N with N-N single bonds. Different from traditional high pressure technique and recently developed plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition method, the route achieves the quantitative synthesis of cg-N at ambient conditions. The simple method to synthesize cg-N offers potential for further scale up production as well as practical applications of polymeric nitrogen based materials as high energy density materials.