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Formamide, the simplest carboxylic acid amide, is a viscous, odorless, colorless liquid with a melting point of 2 ºC and a boiling point of 210 ºC. When it is heated to 180 ºC at atmospheric pressure, however, it begins to decompose into carbon dioxide and ammonia.

In 1920, K H. Meyer and L. Orthmer discovered that formamide can be produced by heating CO₂ and NH₃ under pressure—the reverse of the decomposition reaction. Today, some formamide is still made this way, but the more common process uses the reaction of methyl formate with NH₃. Byproduct methanol is treated with carbon monoxide to produce additional methyl formate.

Formamide is used as a feedstock in the manufacture of formate esters, as an ionizing solvent, as an RNA stabilizer in gel electrophoresis, and in tissue preservation. More intriguingly, it may be a key compound in the origin of life on Earth.

In 2014, chemist S. Civiš and co-workers at the Central European Institute of Technology (Brno, Czech Republic) simulated asteroid and meteor collisions by bombarding formamide and clay with a powerful laser. They produced (among many other compounds) guanine, adenine, cytosine, and uracil—the four nitrogen bases that make up DNA. Formamide is found in great quantities throughout the observable universe, giving credibility to the idea that life on Earth could have originated outside the planet.