How stable can the pentanitrogen cation be in kinetics?

For the 22 year-old pentanitrogen cation N 5 + ( 01 ), we surprisingly found that the previously reported transition states (TSs) do not correspond to N 2 -extrusion. We located the real N 2 -extrusion TS, which can well reconcile the hitherto remaining inconsistency between the gas-phase and salt-like forms of 01 both in structure and energetics. We for the first time located the real N 2 -extrusion transition state of the pentanitrogen cation N 5 + , which can reconcile the existing inconsistency between the gas-phase and salt-like kinetic stabilities both in structure and energetics.