Antimony, complexes with perchlorate

Perchloric acid (HCIO4 Ho —13.0), fluorosulfuric acid (HSO3F Ho — 15.1), and trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (CF3SO3H Ho —14.1) are considered to be superacids, as is truly anhydrous hydrogen fluoride. Complexing with Lewis acidic metal fluorides of higher valence, such as antimony, tantalum, or niobium pentafluoride, greatly enhances the acidity of all these acids. 

Wieland, 1907 Wieland and Wecker, 1910). Oxidation was carried out in an inert solvent such as benzene, from which the salt precipitated. The easier and more reliable preparation of perchlorate salts by the iodine-silver perchlorate method (Weitz and Schwechten, 1926, 1927), to which we have referred earlier (p. 168), allowed a much clearer understanding of the nature of triarylaminium ions to be obtained. Isolation of perchlorates permitted chemical studies, and easy reduction to the triarylamine by iodide ion, ferrous ion, etc., was consistent with the cation-radical view that was developed. The name aminium ion was coined by Weitz. Other salts were prepared such as tritolylaminium picrate (by oxidation of the amine with lead dioxide in the presence of picric acid), and it was also recognized that conjugate anions in salts obtained by oxidation with antimony pentachloride, phosphorus pentachloride and ferric chloride had to be complex anions rather than simple anionic radicals. This is a particularly pertinent point in antimony pentachloride oxidations (p. 165). 

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