Topic summary
CL-20
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane.
Polymeric derivatives
In 2017, K.P. Katin and M.M. Maslov designed one-dimensional covalent chains based on the CL-20 molecules. Such chains were constructed using CH
2 molecular bridges for the covalent bonding between the isolated CL-20 fragments. It was theoretically predicted that their stability increased with efficient length growth. A year later, M.A. Gimaldinova and colleagues demonstrated the versatility of CH
2 molecular bridges. It is shown that the use of CH
2 bridges is the universal technique to connect both CL-20 fragments in the chain and the chains together to make a network (linear or zigzag). It is confirmed that the increase of the effective sizes and dimensionality of the CL-20 covalent systems leads to their thermodynamic stability growth. Therefore, the formation of CL-20 crystalline covalent solids seems to be energetically favorable, and CL-20 molecules are capable of forming not only molecular crystals but bulk covalent structures as well. Numerical calculations of CL-20 chains and networks' electronic characteristics revealed that they were wide-bandgap semiconductors.