Since Neil Bartlett made the first xenon compound — xenon hexafluoroplatinate — in 1962, around 80 compounds have been made, many of them with the aggressive fluorine atom. The latest step ...

Thanks to British Chemist Neil Bartlett, the first noble gas compound xenon hexafluoroplatinate, or Xe(PtF6), was finally synthesized in the 1960s. But it is so unstable that it could not be used for ...

The proof was in the new compound he had made. That orange-yellow solid was subsequently identified in laboratory studies as xenon hexafluoroplatinate (XePtF 6), the world's first noble gas compound.

Contributions: Bartlett's main speciality was the chemistry of fluorine and of compounds containing fluorine. In 1962, Bartlett prepared one of the first noble gas compounds, xenon ...