This charming concoction of Chlorine and Fluorine was first reported in 1930, and wise chemists have been actively avoiding it ever since. The substance normally occurs in a colourless, odourless gas that is highly poisonous and extremely corrosive. It is, in fact, so corrosive that it will react violently with materials usually thought of as safe.
Stored in its liquid form, chlorine trifluoride will set fire to glass, sand, asbestos and most metals. It is also highly reactive with organic matter such as plants and people. To make matters worse, the gas given off by a chlorine trifluoride fire is even more toxic than the substance itself.
The chemical compound is so unpleasant that the Nazi chemical weapons research division deemed it too unpleasant to work with during WWII and the noted American rocket fuel expert John Drury Clark was once famously quoted as saying that the best way to deal with chlorine trifluoride was with a good pair of running shoes.
That said, it is actually used today in the semiconductor industry, primarily for cleaning chemical deposits off the chambers used to form the integrated circuits used in every day electronics.
