A computational study of proton transfer and solvent effect on nitroamino[1,3,5]triazine-based ammonium energetic salts

We have performed dispersion corrected density functional theory calculations to study the proton transfer in the gas-phase and solvent effects on the structural transformation for a series of nitrogen-rich energetic salts. Proton transfer was observed from the cations to anions within all the salts in the gas-phase and resulted into neutral hydrogen-bonding complexes; however, they were stabilized as ionic structures in the liquid state with solvation energies in the range of -37.72-69.37 kJ/mol. An increment by 4-9 Debye in the dipole moment was found when the salts went from the gas to solution. Moreover, these ionic salts exhibited relatively high densities in the range of 1.63-1.96 g/cm(3) desirable for energetic materials. A combination of NH3OH+ to the cation and -NO2 or -NF2 group to the anion can improve efficiently the detonation performance. Most of the ammonium, hydroxyammonium, and hydrazinium salts were promising competitive explosives and could be used as potential targets for synthesis.