Energetic salts from nitroformate ion.

Development of new energetic salts is the key factor in replacing low performance compounds in conventional formulations of high explosives as well as propellants. Ten salts based on the nitroformate anion and various nitrogen-rich cations were designed and their geometric optimizations carried out using the density functional method. With reasonable oxygen balance (from -36% to 0%), heats of formation (47-624 kJ mol(-1)) and high densities (1.81-1.89 g cm(-3)), the detonation velocity (D) and pressure (P) values of salts were calculated as 8.62-9.36 km s(-1) and 33.10-40.01 GPa, respectively. Lastly, the nitroformate salts studied in this work are of prospective interest as high performance explosives.