Because of its good chemical and thermal stability due to the pi-delocalization along the polymer chain, poly(p-phenylene) was used as starting material for fluorination to obtain new carbon fluoride. A complete characterization of both the virgin polymer, in order to define parameters such as the chain length and the degree of crystallinity, and the fluorinated materials was performed by complementary techniques (F-19, H-1 and C-13 NMR, XRD, FT-IR and EPR). From these data, possible fluorination mechanisms are discussed. Finally, tribological properties have been also studied for the fluorinated samples and compared to those of conventional graphite fluorides. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.