Free and Complexed Fluoropentazoles: Anomalous Ring Charge and Appreciable Kinetic Stability

Fluoronitrogens are strongly related to high-energy density materials. Fluoropentazole (cyclo-FN5) with hitherto the highest N/F ratio at ambient pressure belongs to the family of well-known and 119-year-old pentazoles. Due to the presence of the overwhelmingly electronegative F element, cyclo-FN5 is the only pentazole to date that contains a cationic N5 ring. However, also due to F's large electronegativity, the reported ring destruction barrier of cyclo-FN5 is nearly the lowest (6.7 kcal/mol), which has made its synthesis and characterization quite difficult. Here, cyclo-FN5 was re-predicted to bear an almost doubled ring-destruction barrier (-12-14 kcal/mol) at the CBS-QB3, G4, W1BD, CCSD(T)/CBS//CCSD/cc-pVTZ, and CCSD(T)/CBS//CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVTZ levels. Promisingly, upon further complexation with Lewis acid(s), the ring-destruction barrier of cyclo-FN5 might reach 23 kcal/mol, which is comparable to that of the well-known and already synthesized arylpentazoles (-20 kcal/mol), and the positive charge on the N5 ring can be increased to 0.66 |e|.