beating Chlorine Trifluoride…

oh yeah good hey welcome back to another episode of explosions and fire and today God there's one thing that's been requested so many times over the years for this channel everyone wants to see chlorine trifluoride and for good reason chlorine Tri fluoride is an amazingly dangerous molecule it's an aggressive oxidizer it releases fluoride ions makes hydrofluoric acid which is tremendous ly deadly intensely corrosive although there's been all these stories about it over the years there's been hardly any pictures or footage of the actual molecule or any reactions of chlorine Tri fluoride of course I wanted to make it but it's just not something I can whip up here in the shed the toxicity of chlorine Tri floride alone would make it uh you know not something I could do but this is something that ignites on contact with most materials requires Florine gas to make like it's but it is used as a m you know as a chemical in some industrial processes like the semiconductor industry so in the back of my mind I always thought what if I could go somewhere and film someone else doing chlorine Tri fluoride so imagine how excited I was that there was this German professor Florian Krauss who had chlorine Tri fluoride in a cylinder and wanted to make YouTube videos and he invited YouTubers to come and film and I wasn't invited okay no I can't lie I was definitely invited Nicholas from Advanced tinkering super nice guy he definitely invited me but I said no I mean Germany's a long way right it's far I'm disorganized I somehow I have a real job still no like I can't do it but then I was thinking about it right like this is something I've wanted to do for a decade and I was just letting other people do it so I thought should I ask to be reinv nah that's too awkward surely can do better though right can I just beat chlorine Tri fluoride can I make something more reactive than with more Florine than chlorine trifluoride how would I possibly make that what lab in the world would possibly compete with a prowess of an advanced German Florine lab that's right a different German Florine lab let's go to Germany hell yeah slightly different place let's go yeah good and tag or whatever yeah so I'm here today at the Free University Berlin I'm here to see one of the few labs in the world that routinely uses pure Florine gas so welcome to our Florine Lab at the Free University in Berlin thank you so here in Berlin we have uh a special collaborative Research Center for Florine specific interactions so this means also that we do a lot of fluorination reactions we're here to do an experiment I've always wanted to do but obviously am not capable of doing in my shed so I've come here one interesting molecule which is quite seldom I would say is a fluorinated peroxide fu is an extremely reactive molecule that that's going to be pretty obvious you can't buy it but you can't even really store it will decompose into Florine and oxygen even at liquid nitrogen temperatures it's pretty hardcore molecule so how we will prepare today the F22 now this is quite easy if you have the proper equipment so we are in the Florine lab so we have elemental Florine we have also Elemental oxygen you simply just take liquid Florine and liquid oxygen blast UV light into it I will be getting a bit of help to do it um like okay no I'm legally not allowed to touch any of the equipment this is Nicholas and I am Gaza and we are PhD students in the r lab we are focusing on H hallogen chemistry Nicholas is mainly focusing on Florin chemistry and I am working in Chone chemistry but I will be there and I'm worried that just my presence in the room will make the chemistry stop working anyway so f is another one of these highly reactive molecules that's sort of entered the public Consciousness I think mostly in part because of its name but it is a super reactive molecule it has definitely been made before lots of times over the past decades but one of the things I find so interesting about molecules like this that are so widely known is that there's no pictures of it maybe because it's so rarely made maybe cuz it's so dangerous even on the Wikipedia page it lists two different colors really well sort of conflicting colors so that's our mission for this video and why I'm at this complicated slank line that's dedicated to Florine gas we're trying to see if we can make some food maybe do some reactions and also just see what it looks like what does this thing look like first of all uh for the line setup so we have like here the cooling trap from here down there we have like a very powerful pump and uh then here the

vacuum goes through this soda lime Tower here we have a squirrel pump which is quite good because like sun fling gets to the oil then it would just like immediate burn wouldn't be the best we have like some residual Florine we pump it over the soda lime Tower in the Soder lime Tower the Florine or the HF reacts with um yeah mainly the calcium oxide to form then calcium fluoride then we have like here the line setup where we have then different attachments yeah so it's cuz it's stainless steel and fline reacts with the internal metal Andes a nonreactive layer exactly like a passivated layer here's our Florine valve and this Florine valve is connected to a small Florine bottle which is inside this cage here we don't have to open it like with a hand with a valve we have like this tool which you can just stick here inside then you have like the elemental Florine then you can just open the valve and then you have the floring in the line if you are careful and you really think through what you want to do then uh this is something uh yeah but you must have got it wrong at least once right yeah I mean everybody makes mistakes and if something goes wrong there's usually uh yeah some way to cover it up or like to not cover it up uh yeah mitigate so for our first food synthesis here Nicholas has premixed Florine and oxygen gas this is already filled with like half a bar of oxygen and Elemental Florine and we're going to condense it into its liquid form with Liquid Nitro and pump hard UV light into it and that will cause it to react into the uh the foood an obvious question is what on Earth are we going to use as a reaction vessel while the stainless steel will all passivate we can't use that as a reaction vessel cuz we've got to put the UV light into it the answer is actually PFA tubes it's a fluorinated polymer so quite a common material but it mostly stands up to the Florine and uh and the fo not the most beautiful one but should be closed I say mostly because not always but yeah we can use them to condense liquid Florine and liquid oxygen in a mixture together oh yeah look at that yeah still going to have to put in a lot of UV light though so we've got a very powerful UV lamp it's kind of scary how much light comes out of something like that small isn't it like yeah have you ever had one explode on you uh no not yet we still got to cover the fume Hood in paper so we don't get blinded and still wear glasses for safety it's a lot of light and now we are ready to turn on the UV lamp then like this we already see we saw it quickly on the camera that it turned on in the beginning uh it's not as strong when it heats up then we have like the full UV radiation the camera sees a lot of green and it's putting out a bit of green light but for as much green light it's putting out a lot more hard UV light which the camera doesn't see and we also don't see because we're wearing the glasses which is good I think it looks quite good yeah the reaction vessel is exposed for 2 hours to try and convert these two gases into the fo but after the 2 hours is up we can turn off the light pull back the screen and see it's definitely changed color oh yeah you can see it's col change looks like it actually worked s sorry for doubting it we we've actually made the reaction happen we now have here a mixture of like this solid F in combination with like still liquid oxygen and maybe uh liquid Florine therefore um we just apply vacuum the oxygen and the Florine even at the liquid nitrogen temperature still have evapor pressure so we can remove them in the vacuum okay now we can see that the pressure is down at 1 M here so that means that we have not removing any um volatiles anymore we can close our reaction vessel and then we can remove the duer to see uh the food for a moment and here we can see the nice reddish orange color of the food yeah so here we go here's the color of pure solid Foo yeah it's a vibrant orange red color but really we got to see some reactions with it how reactive is it yeah fantastic Xenon is usually a completely inert gas and we're going to be reacting it with our foood at basically liquid nitrogen temperatures if we condense now the Xenon first of all nothing will happen Xenon will just freeze here at the top and it won't be in contact with the foood but then if we remove the cooling then the Xenon gets into the gazis form and then the foo and the Xenon with react with each other and

it might explode is the key bit well you said it probably won't explode but you handed me hearing protection anyway yeah this reaction has some potential to ignite and uh when like one of these PFA troops or their reaction ignites in there we're not 100% sure what happens there so they hold a bit of pressure these tubes you can go usually up to five to 10 bars in these if it's too much pressure it might rupture and uh then it's quite a l Bang now we have like the white Xenon here condensed okay we'll remove now the liquid nitrogen and then let's see what happens okay so the tube didn't rupture I'm sorry it reacted very quickly after you took it out didn't it didn't need much heat to start so now we let just let it come to room temperature but we've just made Xenon Tetra fluoride a reaction that if you try to do it with Florine gas requires hundreds of degrees worth of temperature and then still doesn't work very well so the foo is so much more reactive than Florine um which is uh a little bit frightening we will remove the Xenon oh maybe I shouldn't say this because it's like a waste of chemicals right that's all right we're a little bit embarrassed to dump the Xenon tetrafluoride just into the Trap and destroy it here uh Xenon tetrafluoride is a very cool molecule it's hard to make and we're just wasting it here but also wasting Xenon feels a little bit I mean have you ever read the film June in that there's the spice which is a drug that they predominantly use to enable space flight Xenon is a drug that no one really knows how it works and we use it for space flight and it's very rare this joke doesn't really have a punch line I just like that's it's just something I think about sometimes so that's poof an extreme oxidizer but it does leave you with a question can we do better what is the most oxidizing thing ever can we make it the molecule we want to make is platinum hexif fluide which features platinum in the plus 6 oxidation state and to make it we simply need to burn Platinum wire over liquid Florine and in like a pressurized Florine reaction vessel so it gets up to pretty Regional pressures right yeah so if you would let this come to room temperature with all of the condensed Platinum inside then yeah there would be a lot of pressure inside like at liquid nitrogen temperature there's a moderate pressure um which is fine we fill the element floring in here now we can add the liquid nitrogen here fill it with elemental Florine again condense the elemental Florine in then add some more Elemental Florine so that we really have an A exess of the elemental fline but now the Platinum wire is stuck inside that reaction vessel how on Earth do we ignite it so now we should have enough Elemental fling inside it's car battery time there are definitely other devices that will generate current to heat a wire to ignite this Platinum and going get this nice car battery here but the procedure Nicholas is following specifically mentioned a car battery so he specifically went out and got a car battery with jumper leads for this experiment which I love uh and um we so we set it up connected all and uh just hope it works that's basically it you don't really see anything thanks for your attention and that's it yeah that's it all right let's go home cuz we can't see we just expect it to fill up with Platinum hexif fluoride so while applying a vacuum while at liquid nitrogen temperatures all the residual Florine got removed but as it warms up the Platinum hexafluoride has a vapor pressure so we should also be able to condense over some Platinum hexif fluoride we can remove now uh the liquid nitrogen uh so that the ptf6 uh slowly warms up gets to a certain point where it has a vapor pressure and then it will condense out of here into our pfa2 so let's do this and um it should be coming over but it didn't nothing really came over even though it should have I have to say I'm a bit concerned that something didn't work as planned was the car battery were we blaming the car battery we're car the floody car battery all right so this is a temp two right yeah we don't see any Sparks so yeah we tried it again doing exactly the same thing and uh yeah

spoiler it also didn't work after years of doing things in my shed I'm very used to things not working uh but you can tell this is this German lab is not used to things not working this might be the first reaction that's ever failed for him I mean that's not true but it certainly felt like it anyway the Assumption was that the Platinum wire had fallen off the electrodes so it wasn't getting the current through so when we eventually took it apart we saw that everything was actually completely fine so it wasn't that at all sorry that was surprising nothing happened we're back cuz the important step of the synthesis was go get aab we had a lunch break would very important as well yes so after a Duna cab break we decided on a third attempt and this time we decided to do really the scientific approach to troubleshooting on a third attempt which is to do exactly the same thing you did on the previous two tries but really think it should work this time yeah and we've decided it will work okay but there a maybe a good time and all that positive thinking and also maybe charging the car battery up to a better level but ignore that bit made the reaction finally work we ignited the Platinum wire inside the Florine atmosphere to start removing the elemental Florine first oh yeah is there like a slightly yellowish color there yeah probably yeah right yeah when we remove the liquid nitrogen duer then we would expect like that it forms like a deep red color there and when we applied the vacuum after all the Florine was gone we started to see Platinum hexafluoride come over and be condensed in our PFA trap oh yeah okay A little bit of background oxidizers want electrons right oxidizers want them badly they need them right that's what makes an oxidizer and a measure of how powerful an oxidizer is what's called electron affinity how much energy is released when that oxidizer finally gets this electron heaps of it in there for oxygen is a reasonably good oxidizer and it has an electron efficiency of 45 electron volt the Florine which is an extremely aggressive oxidizer it's just over three electron volts so Platinum hexif floride you would think if it's more oxidizing than Florine would maybe be like four or five electron volts it's actually eight it really wants an electron and we are going to use this most powerful oxidizer to recreate an exp experiment from 1962 at the start of the 1960s chemistry I mean it's pretty Advanced like it's not that different than it is now but one of the ideas at the time was that the noble gases simply wouldn't react with anything I mean why would they react they've got full electron shells and the ionization potential so the amount of energy needed to remove an electron from the shells is just too much energy you never going to have an oxidizer powerful enough to achieve those energies to pluck an electron from a noble gas at the time no one had managed to get Xenon to react with anything and Xenon had been known for more than several decades and people had tried various reactions even with floring gas but they've never saw any reaction with Xenon this was until Neil Bartlett in 1962 so Bart had been playing around with Platinum hexif floride well I mean as much as you sort of play around with Platinum hexif fluoride but he decided it was probably reactive enough to react with Xenon working basically alone he learned glass blowing to make this intricate apparatus that would react instantly the Platinum hexafluoride and Xenon he would fill the bottom compartment with the hexafluoride use a glass blowing torch to seal it off fill the top compartment with Zenon and then there's a little glass window that he would turn the apparatus some ball bearings would fall down and shatter it and the two would instantly mix in doing so he was hoping to maybe see a color change that indicated a reaction when he performed this reaction this is exactly what happened it turned from a vibrant red to a yellow instantly and for the first time in human history a noble gas had been successfully reactive Bartlet was obviously very excited having seen that beautiful color change and apparently he ran out in the corridor to like tell people about this fantastic reaction but um no one was there because he was doing this reaction past 700 p. m. on a Friday don't do that for starters if you make a discovery that's going to get you nominated for the Nobel Prize 3 years in a row and you do it past 7:00 p. m. on a Friday there's no one no one's going to be around to celebrate with you and secondly if you don't the cleaning staff have to find your body and they already put up with enough from your lab as it is this is like original design yeah you didn't want to change it the only thing we actually changed is that we use now here glass in the original apparatus near B they used like stainless steel balls here and then just moved it like this and then it went down like this hopefully it destroys the glass lay and we can see the new compound let's pray in principle it isn't a problem if the PT F6 is uh getting to the glass and

nothing should happen there if you store it there for short time if you would do it for quite long time then it would be a problem uh indeed um we eliminated now all of Water by adding the elemental Florine it's a nice way to dry your glassw by the way so by applying a vacuum to the glass apparatus we can pull in some of the Platinum hexif fluoride and condense it in the bottom with liquid nitrogen can you see it yeah okay it like a bit now we'll open this again oh yeah nice nice oh nice it could actually be enough already let's wait until everything is condensed so I think now everything is condensed and then comes the hard part where we got to cut off that glass passage with a glass blowing torch to seal off the uh extremely aggressive oxidizer inside a sealed glass vestel yeah so let's see right cuz it's just going to close under the vacum pressure itself easy in Principle as you say principle yeah I was um happy to just watch this bit because um yeah knowing my torch skills I would have destroyed everything but uh it looked pretty good the seal okay we felt reasonably confident in our glass pipe bomb so we got to fill the top of it with xenon gas so now we have like one bar of xenon on this top part here the ptf6 at the bottom ah so you're letting that warm up we let it warm up first hopefully it holds yeah it should once it was filled with Xenon we got to close the valve take it off the line and finally shatter that small glass window that would allow Xenon to mix with the Platinum hexif fluoride 3 2 1 to through I don't know you wanted a big flash of sudden color no it's no no it's fine and I'm happy about it I'm not 100% happy it looks sealed actually but right yeah there was obviously no color change as the window was smashed because the reaction flast was already yellow so we think that some Xenon leaked in through that glass joint all right we're talking about something extremely reactive here it was orange when it was cold and by the time it warmed up when we got off the line it was already yellow so some Xenon somehow leaked through that glass seal I guess it wasn't 100% sealed yeah this was always going to be a difficult reaction to get right on the first try got a backup one but luckily the glass flow had made up an entire reaction vessel for us to try it all again let's pretend we just did that past 700 p. m. on a Friday and no one saw us do it there we go yeah it was all clogged up with yeah so the stick really did help in your opinion which is harder chemistry or using the torch using the torch all right surely attempt two we've mastered things what could possibly go wrong I don't know okay we're not glass blowers we shattered the glass only a small hole but it's enough what happened we get to now see a very cool molecule instead of the Xenon salt we're going to actually make the O2 salt Platinum hexif fluoride is so oxidizing that it's going to oxidize O2 we're actually making a salt out of o2 plus so yeah that was the recreation of the Bartlet experiment if we was slightly more unlucky so maybe the secret is doing it at 7 p. m. on I'm really caught up on the 700 p. m. on a Friday I will not be made to feel guilty as an academic for not working at 700 p. m. on a Friday I'm going to the pub and I shouldn't feel bad for going to the pub at 2 p. m. on a Friday okay you got to set work life boundaries all right and that boundary is 2: p. m. we're back and now we're doing it the modern way because the old way yeah exctly a little bit difficult technology has improved as you can see here's the remaining ptf6 now in this tube and we now added Xenon to our stainless steel line and when we open know this valve

very slowly hopefully we H can see that the color changes to like this yellow color of the Xenon Plus ptf6 Salt camera ready camera is not quite ready sorry camera is incompetent now I will open it oh nice W that's it a really quick xen on action yeah good work valves you know water valves it's it's amazing what they can do if you imagine now the ptf6 with like other substances like it's even yeah it's incredible so that nearly brings us to the end of my time in Berlin but we wanted to try one more experiment with food no I think it's done this time we haven't premixed the gases so we have to load in the pure Florine gas and then the pure oxygen gas all and here we can see there's the elemental Florine that's the yellow color yeah it's beautiful more it's a horrible yellow it's looks scary yeah but I think which one do you like working with more liquid Florine or liquid oxygen you like the liquid fline um actually liquid Florine you know what to expect I like the controlled conditions of the liquid Florine the liqu and we managed to get it so that the two gases Flo on top of each other which I thought was very cool you can see um the oxygen up the top there this is a frightening thing to see it's frightening yeah absolutely okay but I think it looks good yeah I think we have a good amount start after another 2 hours of UV exposure we have a new batch of solid Foo new batch this time we're going to react it with chlorine gas together the same way we did with the Xenon so we're going to condense the chlorine at the very top it's going to solidify and then we pull away the liquid nitrogen and the two will interact very slowly and at cold temperatures now we will condense the chlorine inside this PFA tube close it in and let it come to room temperature so we hopefully see a reaction is there any chance of any chlorine oxide formation by the way oh yeah chlorine gas is an aggressive oxidizer so usually it's the oxidizer but it's not the oxidizer in this case we are of course going to be making chlorine Tri floride directly from F and chlorine gas we can see the yellow chlorine condensing here oh yeah the top now we still have the foo at the bottom we will remove it now and let it slowly come to room temperature and then they will directly react and form the uh clf3 once again hoping that the reaction doesn't generate too much heat to boil the reactants because that will generate enough pressure to burst the tube which will be loud and uh spray extremely corrosive chlorine Tri fluoride everywhere as much as you probably want that to happen we didn't really when we were forming it gas face it is pretty hard to see with all the condensation on the outside of the tube but the reaction is instantaneous as soon as a drop out of chlorine hits the fo it instantly makes chlorine trifluoride which we see at the end as this horrible yellow liquid now we can see something yellow forming at the bottom and this is actually the clf3 oh yeah you can see splashing around in there before long couple minutes it's evaporated away it's gone but we did it we made chlorine Tri floride so the important bit once again with the videos is that we survive them so are we going to try it again or go to the keg party try it again no wrong answer this is the one this is the first shot i' very much like to thank Professor Dr rle for his invitation to come to Berlin and especially thanks to Nicholas and gasa for running through the experiments actually doing the experiments and thanks to everyone at the Free University Berlin for just being good fun and hanging out thanks to for allowing me to fly to Germany to bloody film stuff and still not having to take a sponsor and also a final thanks to Florian KRA for having me in his lab as well I know I said I wasn't really invited I just kind of went anyway in the end of it so I saw those other YouTubers filming their floring stuff you want to see some more floring chemistry there's some fantastic channels Advanced tinkering allias experiments some fantastic content coming out oh well back to it I guess next video let's do it what are we doing next haven't even finish this one but we what's the next what's next