This study is led by Prof. Changqing Jin from Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The one pot synthesis strategy was reported at ambient conditions for preparing polymeric nitrogen materials by using lithium azide precursor.
Researchers successfully prepared stable polymeric nitrogen materials at near ambient conditions using lithium azide precursor through a one pot method. A strong characteristic Raman vibrational peak at 635 cm -1 was observed in the polymerized sample, indicating the formation of atomic cubic gauche structure (cg-N) with N-N single bond. Thermal stability studies revealed that the prepared polymeric nitrogen materials start to decompose upon heating to high temperature, accompanied by heat release. The one pot method in this work achieves the quantitative synthesis of cg-N with a higher mass content, owing to the inclusion of the lightest metal lithium in the product. More importantly, the lithium metal that has excellent ignition performance and a combustion heat of 42.94 kJ/g, makes the approach promising for applications of polymeric nitrogen as a high energy density material.
See the article:
Atomic cubic gauche nitrogen polymerized at ambient pressure, SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy 68 , 298211 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-025-2690-9
Science China Physics Mechanics and Astronomy