Sciencemadness Discussion Board

OF3+ compounds

Pyrovus - 7-12-2005 at 23:01

I'm not sure whether this is true or not, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that for every compound containing hydrogen, there exists a fluorine analogue. This got me thinking as to the existence of OF3+, the fluorine analogue of the hydronium ion. This should be an insanely powerful oxidiser, featuring oxygen in the +4 (!) state. Of course, the trouble would be finding an anion to go with it that isn't oxidised. Anyway, googling yeilded nothing on it :(. Does anyone know if this ion is indeed stable?

guy - 7-12-2005 at 23:40

I don't see how it could exist because F- or F don't have an empty slot for it to accept a pair electrons like a H+.

Pyrovus - 7-12-2005 at 23:58

Well, if you were to try to make it in an analogous way to H3O+, you would be reacting F+ with F2O (which isn't likely to happen, as you're not going to find F+ ions under any conditions remotely approaching normal). But in terms of structure alone, there's nothing wrong with it - all you've got is an oxygen which has lost an electron, and as a result needs to make three covalent bonds in order to have 8 in the outer shell, and these three bonds are made with fluorine atoms:

F
|
:O(+) --- F
|
F

It's isoelectric with NF3:

F
|
:N --- F
|
F

[Edited on 8-12-2005 by Pyrovus]

sparkgap - 8-12-2005 at 01:38

Does anyone here have access to Elsevier publications? I found a journal article that might answer Pyrovus' question on the trifluorooxonium ion's existence:

Crawford, M. and Klapötke, T.M., J. Flourine Chem. 99, 151-156 (1999)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1139(99)00139-6

and a corrigendum:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1139(00)00237-2

Hope this helps...

sparky (~_~)

[Edited on 8-12-2005 by sparkgap]

woelen - 8-12-2005 at 09:44

This is not such a strange question, because the ion NF4(+) exists and is synthesized in the recent past.

Crawford, M. and Klapötke, T.M., J. Fluorine Chem. 99, 151-156 (1999)

sparkgap - 10-2-2006 at 22:28

(misspelled earlier. :o)

sparky (~_~)

Attachment: OF3+.pdf (181kB)
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The corrigendum to Crawford and Klapötke

sparkgap - 10-2-2006 at 22:41

is attached

sparky (~_~)

Attachment: OF3+ corrigendum.pdf (64kB)
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