“…Even less F-substituted arylxenon derivatives (Aryl = 2,6-F 2 C 6 H 3 , 2-FC 6 H 4 , 4-FC 6 H 4 ) were found to be stable at temperatures slightly below 0 • C, when inert tetrafluoroborate [BF 4 ] − was used as a counterion (Naumann et al, 1993). In our case, we should look for bulky weakly coordinating cations ["weakly coordinating cations" is a rather recent concept complementary to the much older concept of "weakly coordinating anions"; see, for example (Price et al, 2009;Fischer et al, 2014;Moritz et al, 2015;Mann et al, 2018)], which do not contain any nucleophilic site that can attack the B-NG bond. Preferentially, we need to find a chemically inert, symmetric, bulky, and rigid cationic species that will be able to reliably separate [B 12 X 11 NG] − anions from each other in the solid phase.…”