Structure
Its structure adopts the rhenium trioxide motif, featuring distorted AlF6 octahedra. Each fluoride is connected to two Al centers. Because of it is a 3-dimensional polymer, AlF3 has a higher melting point. In contrast, the other trihalides of aluminium, AlCl3, AlBr3, and AlI3, which are either molecular or 1-dimensional polymers, have low melting points and evaporate readily to give dimers. In the gas phase, at ca. 1000 °C, aluminium fluoride exists as trigonal molecules of D3h symmetry. The Al-F bond lengths of this gaseous molecule are 163 pm.
Read more about this topic: Aluminium Fluoride
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“When a house is tottering to its fall,
The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part,
One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads,
And its own weight soon brings it toppling down.”
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)