Abstract
Why some explosives are more sensitive to shock than others with similar structures may depend on the stability of carbon-carbon bonds in the aromatic rings and on hydrogen bonding. These apparent relationships resulted from studies by a team of scientists at Sandia National Laboratory, using x-ray excited Auger electron spectroscopy (XAES) to probe the electronic structures of nitroaromatic explosives. The research team's leader, chemist J. William Rogers Jr., notes that the studies involved benzene and five explosives built on the benzene ring: trinitrobenzene (TNB), trinitrotoluene (TNT), monoaminotrinitrobenzene (MATB), diaminotrinitrobenzene (DATB), and triaminotrinitrobenzene (TATB). Although the five compounds have a lot in common, their shock initiation thresholds—the shock pressure required to cause detonation 50% of the time—vary widely. The threshold is 17 kilobars for TNB, 21 for TNT, 30 for MATB, 46 for DATB, and 75 for TATB. To learn the reasons for the differences, Rogers and his Sandia col...
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