Research Progress in the Synthesis of CL‐20 and the Application of Catalysts in the Synthesis

Abstract As the highest energy and most powerful elemental energetic compound known so far, CL‐20 has attracted much attention since its advent. With its use not solely being the production of explosives, but also has great application prospects in other fields, such as propellants and smoke agents. In this paper, the synthetic process of CL‐20 is reviewed. It is divided into two parts: the traditional synthetic method and the new synthetic method. Especially due to the improvement of traditional synthetic method. In recent years, most studies on CL‐20 focus on how to use catalysts to optimize the two processes of hydrodebenzylation of HBIW and the nitration synthesis of CL‐20 with different nitration precursors. Therefore, this review focuses on the utilization of catalysts in the synthetic process, and predicts a bright future research direction focused on CL‐20.