Nitrocyanamide-based ionic liquids and their potential applications as hypergolic fuels

Abstract

Nitrocyanamide ionic liquids with substituted imidazolium, guanidinium, and tetrazolium cations have been synthesized and fully characterized. Aminoguanidinium nitrocyanamide (7) crystallizes in the triclinic system P1̄. The results obtained from theoretical calculations based on 7 are consistent with the single-crystal structure data. These ionic liquids exhibit desirable physicochemical properties, such as low melting points and good thermal stabilities. Furthermore, they are all impact insensitive materials. Their energetic performances, including heats of formation, detonation pressures, and detonation velocities, were studied by a combination of theoretical and empirical calculations. The ionic liquids 1-4 have large liquid ranges and low viscosities. They were shown to be promising candidates as hypergolic ionic liquids through the combustion tests with 100% HNO3. © 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.