8^th European Chemistry Congress

Biography

Biography: Giulia Tarantino

Abstract

The increasing demand for fluorinated compounds, widely employed in several industrial fields, has led to a surge of interest regarding the development of new strategies to perform selective fluorination reactions. However, whilst several breakthroughs have been achieved, the selective formation of C(sp³)-F bonds remains an elusive target. Furthermore, despite the many advantages offered by heterogeneous catalysts, the development of an active and stable heterogeneous catalyst for such processes represents an even geater challenge, due to the harsh reaction conditions typically employed in these reactions. Recently, our group has demonstrated that active and stable heterogeneous catalysts can be employed to perform selective and efficient fluorination reactions. Firstly, we reported that cationic Ag, supported on TiO₂ by mechanochemical synthesis, is an efficient heterogeneous catalyst for the selective formation of new C(sp³)-F bonds via the decarboxylative fluorination of aliphatic carboxylic acid. More recently, and in parallel with this finding, we also developed new photocatalytic methods for the formation of new C(sp³)-F bonds, which employ commercially available TiO₂ as heterogeneous photocatalyst, and display improved levels of sustainability and efficiency relative to all previous fluorination methods. During this presentation, our most recent findings regarding the selective formation of C(sp³)-F bonds via photofluorination with TiO₂ will be discussed. In addition to kinetic and mechanistic studies, detailed spectroscopic studies with DRIFT, ¹⁹F MAS NMR and XPS will also be discussed, as these permit elucidation of the reaction steps mediated by the solid catalyst.