A comparative study of surface acidity in the amorphous, high surface area solids, aluminium fluoride, magnesium fluoride and magnesium fluoride containing iron(III) or aluminium(III) fluorides

The behaviour of the sol-gel prepared, amorphous solids, high surface area (HS) aluminium fluoride and magnesium fluoride in promoting room temperature dehydrochlorination of tert-butyl chloride (Bu^tCl), in their catalytic activity for the dismutation of chlorodifluoromethane and in the temperature programmed desorption of ammonia is similar, indicating that, unexpectedly, both solids exhibit significant surface Lewis acidity. Using a similar approach, it has been demonstrated that surface Lewis acidity in HS-MgF₂ is enhanced by the incorporation of amorphous iron(III) fluoride and probably also by amorphous aluminium(III) fluoride. A second, unexpected feature is the substantial retention of anhydrous hydrogen chloride by all the solids, which is observed by the use of chlorine-36 labelling, when they are exposed at room temperature either to Bu^tCl or to HCl directly. The detailed behaviour of H³⁶Cl towards HS-AlF₃ depends on the fluorinating agent, dichlorodifluoromethane or anhydrous hydrogen fluoride, which is used in the second stage of HS-AlF₃ synthesis. This observation and the pattern of the results obtained overall lead to the proposal that strongly adsorbed HCl behaves as an unconventional Lewis base towards these solids.