Is nitrogen fluoride a dangerous explosive? The Bombing incident at the Boston Marathon reminded me of my teenage experiments with explosives. I made nitrocellulose (gun cotton) & black gunpowder. I could have made nitroglycerin or nitrogen chloride, but considered them too volatile & dangerous. I never considered TNT, perhaps because it is more difficult to make, but do not actually remember why not. Nitrogen chloride is a really nasty explosive: Direct sunlight will cause it to detonate. I just looked up nitrogen fluoride & it does not seem to be a serious explosive. I thought that fluorides were more active than chlorides, but I studied chemistry circa 65 years ago & could be wrong on this. BTW: I was partially responsible for the death of one of my classmates. A mutual friend described my experiments with explosives. My classmate made a pipe bomb & tried to tamp the black gunpowder with a metal rod. A spark caused ignition & the rod was embedded in his stomach. I felt guilty for many years until a friend of mine mentioned the Darwin awards, which helped a bit & made me think that my classmate might have sooner or later done himself in anyway.
I believe the electronegativity of fluorine is higher then of nitrogen therefore it will be a more stable compound as other halogen are closer to nitrogen that will make chlorine less stables
Auraca seems to be right. Certainly NF₃ seems quite stable and actually has some application as an industrial chemical in the manufacture of electronics. I see it is the only one of the nitrogen halides to have a -ve enthalpy of formation. In general the high electronegativity of F would I think lead one to expect the ionic fluorides to be very stable. HF is a very strong acid of course, but then that is covalent and in that case the electronegativity of F accounts for its tendency to dissociate into H⁺ and F⁻, i.e. the stable ionic form of F. This easy dissociation is not available to a species like NF₃ though, due to lack of a suitable stable N cation (N itself has quite high electronegativity). Same goes for organic (carbon) fluorides which are also very stable. I see the lower halides (Cl, Br, I) form N Hal₃ molecules in which the dipole is such as to leave a partial +ve charge on the halogen: not the normal state of affairs, and that steric effects also play a role in lowering the stability of them, esp. NI₃, which of course is notoriously unstable.
I don't believe so, but Nitrogen Tri-iodide is. My recollection is it's to do, in part at least, with stearic hinderance.
Well "stearic" would mean fatty, so "stearic hindrance" would be the sort that it makes it hard to get 3 Texans in the back of an SUVPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. I think you mean "steric". But yes indeed. By the way I was intrigued to find out that the notorious "nitrogen tri-iodide" that we all made at school (the lovely stuff that goes pop when you tread on it, emitting puffs of psychedelic purple (iodine) smoke, is not in fact strictly NI₃ but NI₃.NH₃, an adduct in the crystals of which there are chains of -NI₂-I-NI₂-I- , with NH₃ molecules between the chains. This strikes me as interesting, in that it seems to involve a rather unconventional bonding scheme, involving both a dative N -> I bond AND a second bond from I to the next N. Evidently some empty d orbitals in I are getting involved in the bonding, or something. (Confess I'm a bit rusty on this stuff.)
It seems that my memory of chemistry had a reversed view of the periodic table. The rows with for lower atomic numbers tend to bind tighter & the rows with higher numbers tend to be less stable. Hence nitrogen fluoride more stable & nitrogen iodide less stable than nitrogen chloride: I remembered it backwards. I suppose that a modern teenager could not easily buy concentrated sulphuric or hydrochloric acid & various other chemicals I had access to. I am guessing it is still possbile to buy the chemicals required for black gun powder, which is not much of an explosive. There are a lot of gadgets/chemicals no longer easily available. My first 3-4 cars had a search light usable by the driver for looking at street signs & house numbers at night. Many teenagers used them to blind oncoming drivers and to annoy people with picture windows in their homes. I miss that optional item which has not been available to civilians for circa 50 years. I wonder if any state allows them for civilian use.
Know what you mean. I bought a chemistry set for my son, but almost all the interesting chemicals I recall, from when I had one at a similar age, are no longer considered safe. What a bore. No wonder we all worry about the low take up of the sciences at school these days.
Not safe . you and I we are alive , I did not think about safety in my classes nor at work I did not think I will make 40 years old yet with all that I an not far away from double at that age . I think that safety safety is blown out of proportion.
