Person:

Ritter, Tobias

We report a regiospecific silver-mediated fluorination of aryl stannanes. The presented reaction can afford complex fluoroarenes from readily available phenols in three steps. The operational simplicity and the broad substrate scope of the fluorination should render this reaction a useful tool for the synthesis of milligram to gram quantities of functionalized aryl fluorides. Silver-mediated oxidative transformations of aryl nucleophiles that proceed via bimetallic redox processes are a new avenue to develop carbon−heteroatom bond formations.

A chemo- and regioselective (\alpha)-hydroxylation reaction of carbonyl compounds with molecular oxygen as oxidant is reported. The hydroxylation reaction is catalyzed by a dinuclear Pd(II) complex, which functions as an oxygen transfer catalyst, reminiscent of an oxygenase. The development of this oxidation reaction was inspired by discovery and mechanism evaluation of previously unknown Pd(III)−Pd(III) complexes.

One-dimensional metal wires are valuable materials because of their optical and electronic anisotropy, and they have potential utility in devices such as photovoltaic cells and molecular sensors. However, despite more than a century of research, only a few examples exist of well-defined one-dimensional (1D) metal wires that allow for the rational variation of conductivity. Herein we describe the first examples of 1D molecular wires supported by Pd–Pd bonds, the thin-film conductive properties of which can be altered by controlled molecular changes. Wires based on Pd(III) give semiconducting films with a modifiable bandgap, whereas wires based on Pd(2.5) give films that display metallic conductivity above 200 K: a metallic state has not been reported previously for any polymer composed of 1D metal wires. The wires are infinite in the solid state and maintain 1D structures in solution with lengths of up to 750 nm. Solution stability enables thin film coating, a requisite for device fabrication using molecular wires.

The unnatural isotope fluorine-18 ((^{18}F)) is used as a positron emitter in molecular imaging. Currently, many potentially useful (^{18}F)-labeled probe molecules are inaccessible for imaging because no fluorination chemistry is available to make them. The 110-minute half-life of (^{18}F) requires rapid syntheses for which ([^{18}F])fluoride is the preferred source of fluorine because of its practical access and suitable isotope enrichment. However, conventional ([^{18}F])fluoride chemistry has been limited to nucleophilic fluorination reactions. We report the development of a palladium-based electrophilic fluorination reagent derived from fluoride and its application to the synthesis of aromatic (^{18}F)-labeled molecules via late-stage fluorination. Late-stage fluorination enables the synthesis of conventionally unavailable positron emission tomography (PET) tracers for anticipated applications in pharmaceutical development as well as preclinical and clinical PET imaging.

An operationally simple ipso fluorination of phenols with a new deoxyfluorination reagent is presented.

Saving the best for last: Novel palladium complexes allow mild, two-step fluorination of aryl boronic acids (see scheme). The reaction is regiospecific, functional-group tolerant, has a broad substrate scope, and is ideally suited for the introduction of fluorine substituents at a late stage for aryl fluoride synthesis.

We have observed two high-valent arylpalladiumfluoride complexes that afford carbon−fluorine bond formation upon thermolysis.

A silver-mediated cross-coupling of trifluoromethoxide with aryl stannanes and arylboronic acids to give aryl trifluoromethyl ethers is reported. This is the first report of a transition-metal-mediated (C_{aryl}–OCF_3) bond formation.

We report a practical synthesis method of the reagent PhenoFluor on decagram scale, provide a new formulation of PhenoFluor as a toluene solution, which should decrease challenges associated with the moisture sensitivity of the reagent, and expand the substrate scope of deoxyfluorination with PhenoFluor to heteroaromatics.

The first systematic mechanism study of C−F reductive elimination from a transition metal complex is described. C−F bond formation from three different Pd(IV) fluoride complexes was mechanistically evaluated. The experimental data suggest that reductive elimination occurs from cationic Pd(IV) fluoride complexes via a dissociative mechanism. The ancillary pyridyl-sulfonamide ligand plays a crucial role for C−F reductive elimination, likely due to a κ3 coordination mode, in which an oxygen atom of the sulfonyl group coordinates to Pd. The pyridyl-sulfonamide can support Pd(IV) and has the appropriate geometry and electronic structure to induce reductive elimination.