Development of a Lean Process to the Lead-Free Primary Explosive DBX-1

Abstract

Copper(I) 5-nitrotetrazolate (DBX-1) has emerged in recent years as a primary explosive that could serve as a replacement for lead azide (LA), a widely used explosive that has fallen out of favor due to its toxicity and chemical compatibility issues. While there is a significant amount of interest in this material, the development of DBX-1 has been hampered by the tedious and poorly understood chemical process for its preparation. To consistently produce DBX-1, two explosive intermediates must be isolated, and one of them requires purification. In this article, we present an improved process for the synthesis of DBX-1. In this process, neither of these intermediates needs to be handled by an operator, and the purification step is no longer necessary. It would be practical to perform the entire process under remote control, a necessity for energetic material manufacturing. We discuss the implications of our findings for the development of a robust process for the reproducible production of high quality DBX-1.

Metal‐Organic Framework Templated Synthesis of Copper Azide as the Primary Explosive with Low Electrostatic Sensitivity and Excellent Initiation Ability

“…At present, the most widely used primary explosives are combinations of lead azide (LA) and lead styphnate (LS). Such system retains the good flame sensitivity of LS and the good initiation ability of LA . Unfortunately, these combinations still suffer from high electrostatic sensitivity originating from the LS component, and thus leading to many terrible explosion accidents by electrostatic discharge .…”

Recent Advances in the Synthesis of High Explosive Materials

“…On a laboratory-scale, some improvements have been made over time including the addition of a copper(II) species such as CuSO 4¨5 H 2 O to suppress the microdetonation events by converting 5-diazotetrazole to the innocuous 5-hydroxytetrazole. Furthermore, employing an excess of sodium nitrite in the reaction mixture enhances the safety of the filtration step to isolate copper acid salt (34). Unfortunately, the microdetonation and dangerous filtration of copper acid salt (34) commonly resurface when NaNT is synthesized on a production-sized scale.…”

“…5% 5-aminotetrazole as an impurity. Furthermore, in synthesizing copper acid salt (34), it was discovered that use of HNO 3 in the modified Sandmeyer protocol led to the depositing of the explosive 5-aminotetrazole nitrate on the feeding lines.…”

“…Fortunately, pioneering work at Nalas Engineering by Salan and co-workers have solved this looming issue [34]. Throughout the course of their investigation, it was discovered that synthesizing NaNT by the traditional method shown in Scheme 10 does not result in a pure product.…”

Preparation of a nanoscale homogeneous energetic lead azides@porous carbon hybrid with high ignition ability by in situ synthesis

“…[4][5][6][7] The combination of lead azide (LA) and lead styphnate (LS) represents one of the most widely used primary explosives. 8,9 Among them, LA has a strong detonating ability, but is vulnerable due to its poor ignition ability. Therefore, LA needs to be equipped with LS which exhibits a good ignition capacity and serves as the most commonly used ignition agent.…”