Technetium fluoride (Tc

Technetium

Technetium is the chemical element with atomic number 43 and symbol Tc. It is the lowest atomic number element without any stable isotopes; every form of it is radioactive. Nearly all technetium is produced synthetically and only minute amounts are found in nature...

F₆

Fluorine

Fluorine is the chemical element with atomic number 9, represented by the symbol F. It is the lightest element of the halogen column of the periodic table and has a single stable isotope, fluorine-19. At standard pressure and temperature, fluorine is a pale yellow gas composed of diatomic...

) is a yellow inorganic compound

Inorganic compound

Inorganic compounds have traditionally been considered to be of inanimate, non-biological origin. In contrast, organic compounds have an explicit biological origin. However, over the past century, the classification of inorganic vs organic compounds has become less important to scientists,...

 with a low melting point

Melting point

The melting point of a solid is the temperature at which it changes state from solid to liquid. At the melting point the solid and liquid phase exist in equilibrium. The melting point of a substance depends on pressure and is usually specified at standard atmospheric pressure...

. It was first identified in 1961. In this compound, technetium has an oxidation state

Oxidation state

In chemistry, the oxidation state is an indicator of the degree of oxidation of an atom in a chemical compound. The formal oxidation state is the hypothetical charge that an atom would have if all bonds to atoms of different elements were 100% ionic. Oxidation states are typically represented by...

 of +6, the highest oxidation state found in the technetium halide

Halide

A halide is a binary compound, of which one part is a halogen atom and the other part is an element or radical that is less electronegative than the halogen, to make a fluoride, chloride, bromide, iodide, or astatide compound. Many salts are halides...

s. The other such compound is technetium(VI) chloride, TcCl₆. In this respect, technetium differs from rhenium which forms a heptafluoride, ReF₇

Rhenium heptafluoride

Rhenium heptafluoride is the compound with the formula ReF7. It is a yellow low melting solid, and is the only thermally stable metal heptafluoride. It has a distorted pentagonal bipyramidal structure similar to IF7, which was confirmed by neutron diffraction at 1.5K. The structure is non-rigid as...

.

Preparation

Technetium hexafluoride is prepared by heating the metal in excess of F₂ at 400 °C.

Tc + 3 →

Properties

TcF₆ is octahedral

Octahedral molecular geometry

In chemistry, octahedral molecular geometry describes the shape of compounds where in six atoms or groups of atoms or ligands are symmetrically arranged around a central atom, defining the vertices of an octahedron...

, as shown by infrared

Infrared spectroscopy

Infrared spectroscopy is the spectroscopy that deals with the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, that is light with a longer wavelength and lower frequency than visible light. It covers a range of techniques, mostly based on absorption spectroscopy. As with all spectroscopic...

 and Raman spectra

Raman spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopy is a spectroscopic technique used to study vibrational, rotational, and other low-frequency modes in a system.It relies on inelastic scattering, or Raman scattering, of monochromatic light, usually from a laser in the visible, near infrared, or near ultraviolet range...

. Its low-temperature orthorhombic

Orthorhombic crystal system

In crystallography, the orthorhombic crystal system is one of the seven lattice point groups. Orthorhombic lattices result from stretching a cubic lattice along two of its orthogonal pairs by two different factors, resulting in a rectangular prism with a rectangular base and height , such that a,...

 form converts to the higher symmetry body-centred cubic

Cubic crystal system

In crystallography, the cubic crystal system is a crystal system where the unit cell is in the shape of a cube. This is one of the most common and simplest shapes found in crystals and minerals....

 form at room temperature, like other metal hexafluorides such as RhF₆ and OsF₆. Preliminary measurements of magnetic moment

Magnetic moment

The magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantity that determines the force that the magnet can exert on electric currents and the torque that a magnetic field will exert on it...

 yield a value of 0.45 µB, which is lower than expected for a d¹ octahedral compound.

TcF₆ reacts with alkaline chloride

Chloride

The chloride ion is formed when the element chlorine, a halogen, picks up one electron to form an anion Cl−. The salts of hydrochloric acid HCl contain chloride ions and can also be called chlorides. The chloride ion, and its salts such as sodium chloride, are very soluble in water...

s in iodine pentafluoride

Iodine pentafluoride

Iodine pentafluoride is an interhalogen compound with chemical formula IF5. It is a fluoride of iodine. It is a colourless or yellow liquid with a density of 3.250 g cm−3. It was first synthesized by Henri Moissan in 1891 by burning solid iodine in fluorine gas...

 (IF₅) solution to form hexafluorotechnetates.

TcF₆ disproportionates on hydrolysis

Hydrolysis

Hydrolysis is a chemical reaction during which molecules of water are split into hydrogen cations and hydroxide anions in the process of a chemical mechanism. It is the type of reaction that is used to break down certain polymers, especially those made by condensation polymerization...

 with aqueous NaOH to form a black precipitate of TcO₂.

In hydrogen fluoride

Hydrogen fluoride

Hydrogen fluoride is a chemical compound with the formula HF. This colorless gas is the principal industrial source of fluorine, often in the aqueous form as hydrofluoric acid, and thus is the precursor to many important compounds including pharmaceuticals and polymers . HF is widely used in the...

 solution, TcF₆ reacts with hydrazinium fluoride to yield N₂H₆TcF₆ or N₂H₆(TcF₆)₂.