Ethyl Cyanoacetate as Precursor for Azole Based Energetic Materials

Abstract

Ethyl cyanoacetate is a cheap commercially available starting material for the synthesis of mixed azole-based energetic materials. Nitrile moiety of ethyl cyanoacetate can be easily converted to an energetic tetrazole ring, whereas, CH2COOEt moiety can be easily converted to CH2COOH or CH2CONH2 moieties. Further, CH2COOH moiety can be converted to a pyrazole ring and CH2CONH2 can be converted to a 1,3,4-oxadiazole ring. In this work, we have tried to obtain mixed azole-based energetic compounds having energetic 3,5 dinitropyrazole and tetrazole moieties connected with a C-C bond (Compound 6) and compounds having tetrazole and 1,3,4-oxadiazole ring connected with a methylene bridge (Compounds 9 and 10). All the compounds were thoroughly characterized by IR, NMR [1 H, 13C{1 H}], elemental analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).