How stable can the pentanitrogen cation be in kinetics?

Abstract

For the 22 year-old pentanitrogen cation N₅⁺ (01), we surprisingly found that the previously reported transition states (TSs) do not correspond to N₂-extrusion. We located the real N₂-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.