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It is well-known that an explosive is defined as a material which contains a large amount of energy stored in chemical bonds. The energetic stability of gaseous products, and hence, their generation comes from the strong bond formation of carbon (mono/di)oxide and (di)nitrogen. Consequently, most commercial explosives are contained –NO2, -ONO2, and/or –NHNO2 groups which, when detonate to release gases like the aforementioned ones, such as nitroglycerine, TNT, HMX, PETN, nitrocellulose, etc. It is revealed that the elemental compositions, especially nitrogen (N) is found mostly in the explosives and chemical fertilizers. It is also proved that chemical fertilizers can be used as the explosive material. In this work, the elemental composition and structure are analyzed using a scanning electron microscopy coupled with an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) and a proton-induced X-ray emission spectroscopy (PIXE). The chemical fertilizer structures are also characterized using Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) based on synchrotron radiation. It was shown that N was showing a relatively high amount in various samples. In addition, the elemental composition analysis revealed the presence of trace elements. Explosives and chemical fertilizers had differences in the specific elemental compositions. It can be concluded that these methods seem to be used as a fingerprint examination to identify various kinds of the explosives and chemical fertilizers.
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