Over the past decade, the most significant, conceptual advances in the field of fluorination were enabled most prominently by organo- and transition-metal catalysis. The most challenging transformation remains the formation of the parent C-F bond, primarily as a consequence of the high hydration energy of fluoride, strong metal-fluorine bonds, and highly polarized bonds to fluorine. Most fluorination reactions still lack generality, predictability, and cost-efficiency. Despite all current limitations, modern fluorination methods have made fluorinated molecules more readily available than ever before and have begun to have an impact on research areas that do not require large amounts of material, such as drug discovery and positron emission tomography. This Review gives a brief summary of conventional fluorination reactions, including those reactions that introduce fluorinated functional groups, and focuses on modern developments in the field.

/pdf/introduction-of-fluorine-and-fluorine-containing-functional-1i8kwiad20.pdf

Introduction of Fluorine and Fluorine-Containing Functional Groups

Visible-light photocatalysis has evolved over the last decade into a widely used method in organic synthesis. Photocatalytic variants have been reported for many important transformations, such as cross-coupling reactions, α-amino functionalizations, cycloadditions, ATRA reactions, or fluorinations. To help chemists select photocatalytic methods for their synthesis, we compare in this Review classical and photocatalytic procedures for selected classes of reactions and highlight their advantages and limitations. In many cases, the photocatalytic reactions proceed under milder reaction conditions, typically at room temperature, and stoichiometric reagents are replaced by simple oxidants or reductants, such as air, oxygen, or amines. Does visible-light photocatalysis make a difference in organic synthesis? The prospect of shuttling electrons back and forth to substrates and intermediates or to selectively transfer energy through a visible-light-absorbing photocatalyst holds the promise to improve current procedures in radical chemistry and to open up new avenues by accessing reactive species hitherto unknown, especially by merging photocatalysis with organo- or metal catalysis.

Visible-Light Photocatalysis: Does It Make a Difference in Organic Synthesis?

Electrophilic Trifluoromethylation by Use of Hypervalent Iodine Reagents

Despite being largely absent from natural products and biological processes, fluorine plays a conspicuous and increasingly important role within pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, as well as in materials science.1a−1c Indeed, as many as 35% of agrochemicals and 20% of pharmaceuticals on the market contain fluorine.1d Fluorine is the most electronegative element in the periodic table, and the introduction of one or more fluorine atoms into a molecule can result in greatly perturbed properties. Fluorine substituents can potentially impact a number of variables, such as the acidity or basicity of neighboring groups, dipole moment, and properties such as lipophilicity, metabolic stability, and bioavailability. The multitude of effects that can arise from the introduction of fluorine in small molecules in the context of medicinal chemistry has been extensively discussed elsewhere.2

For these reasons, methods to introduce fluorine into small organic molecules have been actively investigated for many years by specialists in the field of fluorine chemistry. However, particularly in the past decade, a combination of the increasing importance of fluorine-containing molecules and the successful development of bench stable, commercially available fluorine sources has brought the expansion of fluorine chemistry into the mainstream organic synthesis community. This has resulted in an acceleration in the development of new fluorination methods and consequently in methods for the asymmetric introduction of fluorine.3 Catalytic asymmetric fluorination methods have inevitably lagged somewhat behind their nonasymmetric counterparts as understanding of the modes of reactivity of new fluorinating reagents must generally be developed and understood before they can be extended to enantioselective catalysis.3b Indeed, the last special issue of Chemical Reviews dedicated to fluorine chemistry, in 1996, contained no articles addressing asymmetric fluorine chemistry, and the editor of the issue noted that “although fluorine chemistry is much less abstruse now than when I entered the field a generation ago, it remains a specialized topic and most chemists are unfamiliar, or at least uncomfortable, with the synthesis and behavior of organofluorine compounds.”4 The field has undoubtedly undergone great change within the last two decades.

As with the incorporation of the fluorine atom, the introduction of the trifluoromethyl (CF3) group into organic molecules can substantially alter their properties. As with fluorine, the prevalence of CF3 groups in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals coupled with the development of new trifluoromethylating reagents also has led to a recent surge in the development of asymmetric trifluoromethylation and perfluoroalkylation. Although the fluorine and trifluoromethyl moieties are often found on the aromatic rings of many pharmaceutical and agrochemicals rather than in aliphatic regions, this may be a result of the lack of efficient methods for the asymmetric introduction of C–F and C–CF3 bonds into molecules; it could be the case that lack of chemical methods is restricting useful exploration of such molecules. However, there are still encouraging examples of drug candidates containing chiral fluorine and trifluoromethyl-bearing carbons (Figure ​(Figure11).



Figure 1

Molecules of medicinal interest bearing C–F and C–CF3 stereocenters.

Advances in catalytic enantioselective fluorination, mono-, di-, and trifluoromethylation, and trifluoromethylthiolation reactions.

Fluorination in Medicinal Chemistry: Methods, Strategies, and Recent Developments

S-, Se-, and Te-trifluoromethylated dibenzoheterocyclic onium salts, their derivatives, and related salts were synthesized by the direct fluorination of a mixture of 2-[(trifluoromethyl)thio- or seleno]biphenyls and triflic acid (TfOH) or HBF 4 etherate, by treatment of the corresponding sulfoxides and selenoxides with Tf 2 O by a new type of tellurium activation of 2-[(trifluoromethyl)telluro]biphenyls with Tf 2 O and (CH 3 ) 2 SO, or by derivation from the onium salts obtained. Examination of reactivity indicated the trifluoromethyl heterocyclic salts to be greatly reactive compared to nonheterocyclic salts and indicated that this heterocyclic salt system serves as a source of widely applicable trifluoromethylating agents

Power-variable electrophilic trifluoromethylating agents. S-, Se-, and Te-(trifluoromethyl)dibenzothio-, -seleno-, and -tellurophenium salt system

We report in situ synthesis of the first CF3 oxonium salts, thermally unstable O-(trifluoromethyl)dibenzofuranium salts, which furthermore have different counteranions (BF4-, PF6-, SbF6-, and Sb2F11-) and ring substituents (tert-butyl, F, and OCH3), by photochemical decomposition of the corresponding 2-(trifluoromethoxy)biphenylyl-2‘-diazonium salts at −90 to −100 °C. The yields markedly increased in the order of BF4- < PF6- < SbF6- < Sb2F11-. The CF3 oxonium salts were fully assigned by means of 1H and 19F NMR spectroscopy at low temperature. The CF3 salts decomposed to form CF4 and dibenzofurans. The half-life times at −60 °C of the 2-tert-butyl salts having different counteranions were 29 min for BF4- salt 2d, 36 min for PF6- salt 2c, 270 min for SbF6- salt 2a, and 415 min for Sb2F11- salt 2b. Those at −60 °C of the Sb2F11- salts having different 2-substituents were 13 min for F salt 3b, 63 min for H (unsubstituted) salt 1b, and 415 min for tert-butyl salt 2b. Thus, the stability of the CF3 oxonium sal...

CF3 oxonium salts, O-(trifluoromethyl)dibenzofuranium salts: in situ synthesis, properties, and application as a real CF3+ species reagent.

Power-variable trifluoromethylating agents, (trifluoromethyl)dibenzothio- and -selenophenium salt system

Useful electrophilic trifluoromethylating agents; S-, Se- and Te-(trifluoromethyl)dibenzo-thio-, -seleno- and -telluro-phenium-3-sulfonates

Effective methods for preparing S-(trifluoromethyl)dibenzothiophenium salts

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