Because of its weakly coordinating abilities, lithium tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)borate makes it commercially valuable in the salt form in the catalyst composition for olefin polymerization reactions and in electrochemistry.

The tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)borates have the advantage of operating on a one-to-one stoichiometric basis with Group IV transition metal polyolefin catalysts, unlike methylaluminoxane (MAO) which may be used in large excess.

The salt was first produced in studies on tris(pentafluorophenyl)boron, a well known Lewis acidic compound.

Combining equimolar ether solutions of pentafluorophenyllithium and tris(pentafluorophenyl)boron gives the lithium salt of tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)borate, which precipitates the etherate as a white solid:[1] Since its discovery, many revised syntheses have been described.

[2] Lithium tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)borate is primarily used to prepare cationic transition metal complexes: LiB(C6F5)4 is converted to the trityl reagent [Ph3C][B(C6F5)4], which is useful activator of Lewis-acid catalysts.