Heptanitrocubane is an experimental

high explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An exp ...

based on the cubic eight-carbon

cubane Cubane is a synthetic hydrocarbon compound with the Chemical formula, formula . It consists of eight carbon atoms arranged at the corners of a Cube (geometry), cube, with one hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom. A solid crystalline substanc ...

molecule and closely related to

octanitrocubane Octanitrocubane (molecular formula: C8(NO2)8) is a proposed high explosive that, like TNT, is shock-insensitive (not readily detonated by shock). The octanitrocubane molecule has the same chemical structure as cubane (C8H8) except that each of th ...

. Seven of the eight

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

atoms at the corners of the cubane molecule are replaced by

nitro Nitro may refer to: Chemistry *Nitrogen, a chemical element and a gas except at very low temperatures, with which many compounds are formed: **Nitro compound, an organic compound containing one or more nitro functional groups, -NO2 **Nitro ligand ...

groups, giving the final molecular formula . As with octanitrocubane, not enough heptanitrocubane has been synthesized to perform detailed tests on its stability and energy. It is hypothesized to have slightly better performance than explosives such as HMX, the current high-energy standard explosive, based on chemical energy analysis. While in theory not as energetic as octanitrocubane's theoretical maximum density, the heptanitrocubane that has been synthesized so far is a more effective explosive than any octanitrocubane that has been produced, due to more efficient crystal packing and hence higher density. Heptanitrocubane was first synthesized by the same team who synthesized octanitrocubane, Philip Eaton and Mao-Xi Zhang at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, in 1999.

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Further reading