Trinitrotriazine, or 2,4,6-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine, is a theoretical

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 ex ...

compound. Synthesis of this compound has been elusive despite its simple structure, as conventional

nitration In organic chemistry, nitration is a general class of chemical processes for the introduction of a nitro group () into an organic compound. The term also is applied incorrectly to the different process of forming nitrate esters () between Alcohol ...

of triazine becomes increasingly more difficult as more nitro groups are added. A successful route would more likely proceed by trimerisation of nitryl cyanide. The precursor nitryl cyanide was first synthesized by Rahm et al. in 2014. Trinitrotriazine has a neutral

oxygen balance Oxygen balance (OB, OB%, or Ω) is an expression that is used to indicate the degree to which an explosive can be oxidized, to determine whether the molecules of explosive substance or mixture contains enough oxygen to fully oxidize the other atom ...

, potentially making it a very powerful explosive, though calculations predict it would be fairly unstable and inferior to the related compound 3,6-dinitro-1,2,4,5-tetrazine.Jinshan Li. An Ab Initio Theoretical Study of 2,4,6-Trinitro-1,3,5-Triazine, 3,6-Dinitro-1,2,4,5-Tetrazine, and 2,5,8-Trinitro-Tri-s-Triazine, more commonly known as RDX. ''Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics.'' December 2008; 33(6):443-447.

References

Explosive chemicals Triazines Nitro compounds Hypothetical chemical compounds {{theoretical-chem-stub

See also

References