The fluorination of 2-methylpropane over cobalt trifluoride

2-Methylpropane has been fluorinated over cobalt trifluoride at 140-200°C to give a mixture of at least 30 components, of which 22 have been identified with some certainty and five, more tentatively; this represents well over 95% of the reaction mixture. About 95% of the identified products were polyfluoro(2-methylpropanes); the rest were polyfluorobutanes. The fluorination was not completely random; there was a clear preference (by some 10 times greater than chance) for compounds in which the tertiary hydrogen had been replaced by fluorine. A scheme for the fluorination pathway is proposed. Attempts to dehydrofluorinate 1,3-pentafluoro-2-fluoromethylpropane failed.