A few materials such as nitrogen triiodide cannot be touched at all without detonating, and so are of purely academic interest.

Nitrogen triiodide is an extremely sensitive contact explosive.

Nitrogen triiodide, a primary high explosive, is formed when ammonia comes in contact with iodine.

Additionally, several compounds, such as nitrogen triiodide, are so sensitive that they cannot even be handled without detonating.

Nitrogen triiodide is the inorganic compound with the formula NI.

The material that is usually called "nitrogen triiodide" is prepared by the reaction of iodine with ammonia.

Iodine monofluoride is used to produce pure nitrogen triiodide:

Nitrogen triiodide is also notable for being the only known chemical explosive that detonates when exposed to alpha particles and nuclear fission products.

Small amounts of nitrogen triiodide are sometimes synthesized as a demonstration to high school chemistry students or as an act of "chemical magic".

Nitrogen triiodide was first characterized by Raman spectroscopy in 1990 when it was prepared by an ammonia-free route.

When mixed with ammonia and water, elemental iodine forms nitrogen triiodide which is extremely shock sensitive and can explode unexpectedly.

Sometimes the name ammonium triiodide is mistakenly used to refer to a different compound, nitrogen triiodide (NI).

Nitrogen triiodide is so sensitive that it can be reliably detonated by exposure to alpha radiation; it is the only explosive for which this is true.

It proved to be far less reactive than the other nitrogen trihalides nitrogen trichloride, nitrogen tribromide and nitrogen triiodide, all of which are explosive.

Examples include nitrogen triiodide (NI) and phosphorus triiodide (PI), where individual iodines are covalently bonded to a central atom.

This results in a very low activation energy for its decomposition, a reaction made even more favorable due to the great stability of N. Nitrogen triiodide has no practical commercial value due to its extreme shock sensitivity, making it impossible to store, transport, and utilize for controlled explosions.

Whereas pure nitroglycerin is also greatly shock-sensitive (although not nearly as much so as nitrogen triiodide, which can be set off with the touch of a feather) and powerful, it was only due to phlegmatizers that its shock sensitivity was reduced and it became safer to handle and transport in the form of dynamite.