Promising Energetic Melt-Castable Material with Balanced Properties

As
one of the most widely used energetic materials to date, trinitrotoluene
(TNT) suffers from several generally known drawbacks such as high
toxicity, oil permeability, and poor mechanical properties, which
are driving researchers to explore new high-performance energetic
melt-castable materials for replacing TNT. However, it still remains
a great challenge to discover a promising TNT alternative due to the
multidimensional requirements for practical applications. Herein,
we reported a new promising energetic melt-castable molecule, 4-methoxy-1-methyl-3,5-dinitro-1H-pyrazole (named as DMDNP). Besides a reasonable melting
point (Tm: 94.8 °C), good thermostability
(Td: 293.2 °C), and excellent chemical
compatibility, DMDNP exhibits some obvious advantages over TNT including
more environmentally friendly synthesis, high yield, low toxicity,
low volume shrinkage, low mechanical and electrostatic sensitivities,
etc., demonstrating well-balanced properties and great promise as
a TNT replacement.