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Category: Explosives
Posted on: May 15, 2008 9:00 AM, by Molecule of the Day
Hexamine is a nitrogenous analogue of adamantane.
The coolest thing about it is the exceptionally stable adamantyl-type system assembles on its own if you just mix ammonia and formaldehyde gas. It's got loads of uses, from little fuel tabs for stoves, to a component of explosive mixtures, to deodorant in China (anyone care to elaborate?)
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Comments
Will hexamine co-crystallize with CBr_4 to give a very porous open network with N->Br donation at the organic tecton's vertices?
Substitute a mole of SO_2(NH_2)_2 for each two moles of ammonia. Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine is remarkably toxic.
Posted by: Uncle Al | May 15, 2008 12:00 PM
No nice graphics for how it self-assemblies? What does it do? I'd say it would not form vesicles, bilayers etc...
Posted by: Egon Willighagen | May 16, 2008 8:34 AM
Ohh how I love hexamine....
Posted by: Jamie | May 20, 2008 2:26 PM
the lone pair on the nitrogen in NH3 acts as a strong nucleophile towards the delta-positive carbonyl in H2CO (formaldehyde), and NH3 is acidic enough to protonate the carbonyl oxygen (so it can eliminate as water).
Cool example.
Posted by: Eximus | May 20, 2008 3:42 PM