Palladium fluoride, also known as palladium trifluoride, is a chemical compound

Chemical compound

A chemical compound is a pure chemical substance consisting of two or more different chemical elements that can be separated into simpler substances by chemical reactions. Chemical compounds have a unique and defined chemical structure; they consist of a fixed ratio of atoms that are held together...

 of palladium

Palladium

Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired...

 and fluorine

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...

. It has the empirical formula

Empirical formula

In chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest positive integer ratio of atoms of each element present in a compound. An empirical formula makes no reference to isomerism, structure, or absolute number of atoms. The empirical formula is used as standard for most ionic...

 PdF₃, but is better described as the mixed-valence compound palladium(II) hexafluoropalladate(IV), Pd^II[Pd^IVF₆] and is often written as Pd[PdF₆] or Pd₂F₆.

Synthesis

Pd[PdF₆] is the most stable product of the reaction of fluorine and metallic palladium.

2Pd + 3F₂ → Pd[PdF₆]

Structure and properties

Pd[PdF₆] is paramagnetic and both Pd(II) and Pd(IV) occupy octahedral sites in the crystal structure

Crystal structure

In mineralogy and crystallography, crystal structure is a unique arrangement of atoms or molecules in a crystalline liquid or solid. A crystal structure is composed of a pattern, a set of atoms arranged in a particular way, and a lattice exhibiting long-range order and symmetry...

. The Pd^II-F distance is 2.17 Å, whereas the Pd^IV-F distance is 1.90 Å.