Antimony pentafluoride polymeric structure

It was indeed found necessary to have excess antimony pentafluoride present in order to obtain stable alkylcarbonium hexafluoroantimonate complexes. Antimony pentafluoride is a liquid Lewis acid fluoride (b.p. 148-150°) of low dielectric constant (e 3), which has been shown by fluorine N.M.R. studies in the pure liquid state and in solution to exist in both cyclic and acyclic polymeric forms involving fluorine bridges. The antimony is in approximately octahedral co-ordination with predominant bridging by coordinating fluorines (Gillespie and Rothenbury, 1963). As fluorine generally does not show bridging properties, the structure of antimony pentafluoride itself indicates the very... 

In the 40 years since Olah s original publications, an impressive body of work has appeared studying carbocations under what are frequently termed stable ion conditions. Problems such as local overheating and polymerization that were encountered in some of the initial studies were eliminated by improvements introduced by Ahlberg and Ek and Saunders et al. In addition to the solution-phase studies in superacids, Myhre and Yannoni have been able to obtain NMR spectra of carbocations at very low temperatures (down to 5 K) in solid-state matrices of antimony pentafluoride. Sunko et al. employed a similar matrix deposition technique to obtain low-temperature IR spectra. It is probably fair to say that nowadays most common carbocations that one could imagine have been studied. The structures shown below are a hmited set of examples. Included are aromatically stabilized cations, vinyl cations, acylium ions, halonium ions, and dications. There is even a recent report of the very unstable phenyl cation (CellJ)... 

Arsenic forms a gaseous pentafluoride and a solid pentachloride which decomposes at temperatures above -50°C. Antimony forms a pentachloride which may be vaporized without decomposition, and a pentafluoride which is tetrameric in the solid phase and trimeric in the gas phase. The structures of the trimer will be described in Chapter 16. The heaviest element in the group (Bi) forms a pentafluoride which is polymeric in the solid phase. The gas phase structure is unknown. 

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