Discovery of Oxygen Fluorides of Coin Metals

Researchers at Freie Universität Berlin Find Experimental Access to Long-sought Class of Compounds. No 056/2018 from Mar 28, 2018 Scientists at Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Virginia (USA) have experimentally generated and characterized a long-sought class of compounds, so-called ternary compounds, which consist of three elements: oxygen, fluorine, and a so-called late-transition metal. The transition metals include the coin metals copper, silver, and gold. Ternary oxygen fluorides of the early transition metals up to the elements of the iron group in the periodic table of the elements - iron, ruthenium, and osmium - have long been known. However, up to now it was not possible to convert the late transition metals beyond the iron group in the periodic table into the corresponding oxygen fluorides. The researchers at Freie Universität led by Sebastian Hasenstab-Riedel from the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the American team were able to demonstrate the difficulties in discovering and characterizing this class of compounds. According to the scientists, earlier attempts to synthesize these new compounds failed because they do not - as would be expected - show strong metal-oxygen double bonds, but instead exist as highly reactive, free radical compounds.