Banding and electronic structures of metal azides——Sensitivity and conductivity

By using both DV-Xα and EH-CO methods, the calculation studies of the structure-property relationships of a series of metal azides, of their clusters’ electronic structures in ground and excited states, of their systems with cation vacancy and the doped Pb(N3)2, as well as their crystal band structures have been conducted. The results show that the sensitivity of ionic-type metal azides varies with the degree of difficulty of electronic transition of the losing charge on N3. A metal azide with cation vacancies has a greater sensitivity than the perfect one. When doped with monovalent metal ions, lead azide’s sensitivity increased; when with trivalent ones, its sensitivity decreased; when with divalent ones, little of it changed. Compared with heavy metal azides. an alkali metal azide has a larger band gap, a smaller band width and a greater transition energy of frontier electron with a smaller amount of losing charge on N3, and thus has lower sensitivity and conductivity than heavy metal azides.