The aim of this book is to survey a number of chemical compounds that some chemists, theoretical and experimental, find fascinating. Some of these compounds, like planar carbon species or oxirene, offer no obvious practical applications; nitrogen oligomers and polymers, in contrast, have been touted as possible high-energy-density materials. What unites this otherwise eclectic collection is that these substances are unknown and offer a challenge to theory and to synthesis.

That such a challenge exists is in some cases almost obvious to most chemists. The instability of nitrogen...

The aim of this book is to survey a number of chemical compounds that some chemists, theoretical and experimental, find fascinating. Some of these compounds, like planar carbon species or oxirene, offer no obvious practical applications; nitrogen oligomers and polymers, in contrast, have been touted as possible high-energy-density materials. What unites this otherwise eclectic collection is that these substances are unknown and offer a challenge to theory and to synthesis.

That such a challenge exists is in some cases almost obvious to most chemists. The instability of nitrogen...