Look out, Road Runner: There’s a new explosive for Wile E. Coyote’s arsenal. By reining in a supersensitive explosive with good old-fashioned TNT, chemists have created a new compound that can be stored and transported safely and then quickly converted to an activated, superexplosive form.
The new “cocrystal” comprises a zigzagging chain of CL-20 and TNT that, after heating, detonates more readily than either explosive alone, researchers report online August 25 in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Developing explosives that have the right mix of properties is extremely difficult.