Name: Jay
Status: student
Grade: 9-12
Location: CA
Country: N/A
Date: July 2006
Question:
What is the basic function of Fluoroantimonic Acid?
It is the strongest superacid, but what purpose does an acid of
this strength serve?
Replies:
One of the most common uses of superacids is to provide an
environment that creates and maintains organic cations, that is,
carbon-based molecules with positive electric charges, for long
periods of time. This is useful because organic cations are
intermediate molecules in a number of useful chemical reactions,
such as the formation of plastics, the creation of high-octane
gasoline from crude oil, and the creation of crude oil from oil
shale. When cations can be maintained in a superacid, they can be
studied in detail so that we can understand and optimize the
reactions involving them.
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