Frozen fluorine’s structure revisited after 50 years

Fifty years after fluorine’s crystal structure was first determined¹ – in experiments that involved explosions and midnight liquid helium handling – the element’s structure has finally been given a second look. In the process, a team of German chemists has managed to solve a controversy surrounding the frozen halogen’s crystal symmetry.²

Fluorine is one of the more widely used elements, so inorganic chemist Florian Kraus from Philipps-University Marburg assumed that its structure must have been studied at great length.