Is blowing things up with chemical explosives really what a mad scientist wants to be doing. It just seems so... petty, and small scope. Unless you're building some sort of doomsday device (which would be more of a physics project) merely "blowing stuff up" is far too lacking ambition IMO.
If you do want to be a mad chemical scientist, I would think biological/medical chemistry would be a better route. For drugging and mind-controlling the population, or creating mutants, or super-soldiers. Or turning the population into mind-controlled mutant super-soldiers.