Abstract
The liquid structure of antimony pentafluoride at room temperature has been investigated using neutron and high-energy X-ray diffraction and subsequently modelled using Empirical Potential structure refinement. The neutron diffraction measurements show that each antimony centre is surrounded by 6 fluorine atoms; four at a non-bridging distance of 1.86 ± 0.03 Å and two bridging fluorines at a distance of 2.03 ± 0.06 Å. The X-ray data show an additional peak at 3.93 ± 0.03 Å attributed to antimony-antimony contacts. The diffraction data were fit to three models; cis-monomer, isolated tetramer and cis-linked chains. The X-ray data rule out the cis-monomer model but good fits are obtained for the isolated tetramer and cis-linked chain models. It is argued that the liquid is comprised of chains of cis-linked tetrameric building blocks when these data and modelling results are considered in light of NMR measurements.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 239-245 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Journal of Molecular Liquids |
| Volume | 131-132 |
| Issue number | SPEC. ISS. |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 15 2007 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The authors thank the U.S. National Science Foundation for financial support for J.F.C. Turner under CAREER award CHE 0349010, J.L. Yarger under award CHE-612553 and DMR-555159 and for S.E. McLain under award OISE-0404938. The experiments performed at Argonne National Laboratory were supported under U.S. DOE Contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38. We also thank Qiang Mei for help with the neutron experiments and D.T. Bowron for useful discussions.
Keywords
- Empirical potential structure refinement
- High-energy X-ray diffraction
- Liquid antimony pentafluoride
- Neutron diffraction