NCU Prof.Cai Hu Achieved Great Breakthrough in the Field of Site-Selective C-H Fluorination of Heteroarenes

     Recently, Prof.Cai Hu’s team from School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of NCU made great research achievements in the field of the C-H Fluorination of Heteroarenes(diagram1). The research paper entitled Metal-Free, Site-Selective C-H Fluorination of Heteroarenes under Visible Light, was published in CCS Chemistry, one of the top journals in the field of chemistry. Prof. Huang Cheng and Prof.Cai Hu from NCU, and Academician Wu Lizhu from Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry CAS are co-corresponding authors. Prof. Huang Cheng and You Changming, a doctoral student of NCU are the first co-authors， NCU as the first author affiliation. The publication of the paper is another outstanding achievement of NCU in the field of Mechanistic organic photochemistry.

Fluorinated azaarenes are widely found in molecules such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides and functional materials, and their synthesis has attached much attention from chemists. The synthesis of such kind of compounds is simple and straightforward through the functional group of C-H Fluorination of Heteroarnes. However, it is full of challenges to achieve the reaction due to the strong inertness and the deficiency of electron aromatic, and the mismatch between the electron properties of these compounds and commonly used fluorine reagents such as inorganic fluoride salt and “NF reagents”.

In this research, the Site-Selective C-H Fluorination of Heteroarenes was realized by photochemical strategy. Members of the research team directly achieved the reaction by using visible light “NF reagents” and silane. The reaction does not require the involvement of metal catalysts, the substrate has good universality and the functional group has good resistance, which can be directly used for post modification of natural product and drug molecules, and achieve efficient reactions under the chemical conditions of light in continuous flow. It shares the feature of step economy and atom economy, which can achieve large-scale application and has very important practical value in the application of large-scale industrial production.

This research has been supported by the Youth Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation, Youth Project and General Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Diagram1 shows the Site-Selective C-H Fluorination of Heteroarenes under Visible Light

Paper link:

https://www.chinesechemsoc.orq/doi/10.31635/ccschem.024.202303726

Editor: Ouyang Qian

                                                                                                                                                                                           Executive Editor: Tu Jinfeng