title: A new route to metal azides.
abstract: Beside several other applications, metal azides can be used for the synthesis of nitridophosphates and binary nitrides. Herein we present a novel synthetic access to azides: Several metals, such as main-group, transition metals, and rare-earth metals, react with silver azide in liquid ammonia as a solvent giving the corresponding metal azides. In this work Mn(N3)2, Sn(N3)2, and Eu(N3)2, as well as their ammonia complexes were synthesized for the first time through low-temperature methods. Also a simpler access to Zn(N3)2 was possible. At room temperature and the respective vapor pressure of NH3, it became possible to grow single crystals of the dinuclear holmium azide [Ho2(μ-NH2)3(NH3)10](N3)3⋅1.25NH3. We are confident that this new route could lead to novel metal azides as well as nitrides of the main-group, the transition, and the rare-earth metals upon careful decomposition.
authors.affiliation: AG Fluorchemie, Department Chemie, Technische Universität München, Lichtenbergstrasse 4, 85747 Garching (Germany) http://www.fluor.ch.tum.de.
authors.forename: Thomas G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Friedrich
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Karau
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Schnick
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Kraus
keywords: ammonia; azides; rare-earth-metal azide; redox reactions; transition-metal azides