Ruff, Otto

NF3 was first prepared by Otto Ruffs group in Germany by the electrolysis of molten NH4F/HF and this process is still used commercially. An alternative is the controlled fluorination of NH3 over a Cu metal catalyst. 

When Booth and Mericola (1940) allowed thionyl chloride to react with antimony trifluoride containing some antimony pentachloride they obtained as products both thionyl fluoride and thionyl chlorofluoride, SOC1F (21). The compound was also produced in the laboratory of Otto Ruff (1937) but the work was not published until 1951. For this work iodine pentafluoride was heated with thionyl chloride (165). 

In Chapter 19 (Section 19.2.4), a carboxylic acid was reduced to an aldehyde. When the salt of an aldonic acid such as the calcium salt of d-gluconic acid (87) is treated with hydrogen peroxide and iron(III), the product is an aldose of one fewer carbon atom—in this case, 14 (d-ribose). This reaction, which oxidatively cleaves one carbon (lost as CO2), is called the Ruff degradation, after Otto Ruff (Germany ... 

In 1930, Otto RufF(1871-1939) and his coworker Otto Bretschneider synthesized CF4 by a reaction of F2 with charcoal and reported about violent combustion reactions of tetrafluoromethane with both calcium and magnesium at elevated temperatures [28]. Ruff and Brettschneider were also the first to obtain the important monomer tetrafluoroethylene, C2F4 (TFE), from tetrafluoromethane by arc discharge between graphite electrodes (Scheme 2.1) in 1933. They described its fierce combustion reaction with sodium [29]. 

Professor Otto Ruff (f87f-f939), University of Danzig, Germany. 

---