Professor Thomas Braun studied chemistry at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Helmut Werner. After a short stay with Pierre Dixneuf (Rennes, France) and postdoctoral work with Robin Perutz (York, UK), he obtained his habilitation at the University of Bielefeld (mentor: Peter Jutzi). In 2007, he was appointed Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he is full professor since 2011. Thomas Braun received the Wöhler Award for Young Scientists in 2006, the RSC Fluorine Chemistry Prize in 2007, and the Fluorine Publication prize of the Fluorine Subject Group of the German Chemical Society in 2015. From 2010 to 2012 he served as the chair of the GDCh Fluorine Chemistry division and was from 2009 to 2018 vice-chair of the DFG (German Research Foundation) Research Training Group GRK 1582 "Fluorine as the Key Element". Currently he is vice-speaker of the DFG Collaborative Research Center "Fluorospecific Interactions: Fundamentals and Applications", and is also Executive Committee Member of the Fluorine Division of the ACS. The major interests of Thomas Braun are in organometallic and fluorine chemistry as well as coordination chemistry with an emphasis on the catalytic activation of small molecules. This involves C−F and C−H bond activation reactions, but as well the chemistry of sulfur fluorides. He also has an interest in heterogeneous catalysis.
Metal-Mediated Fluorination and Defluorination Processes: From Model Reactions to Catalysis
Useful methods for a metal-mediated derivatization of fluorinated molecules are often based on C−H or C−F bond activation reactions. In order to make C−F bond cleavage steps feasible, other strong element−fluorine bonds such as H−F or Si−F bonds have to be formed. Thus, at rhodium, highly reactive Rh(I) species such as [Rh(H)(PEt3)3], [Rh{Si(OEt)3}(PEt3)3] or [Rh(GePh3)(PEt3)3] can serve as suitable tools to induce a C−F activation step, but also C−H activation reactions. Stoichiometric studies at the rhodium complexes as well as initial catalytic reactions for the hydrodefluorination, silylation, germylation and C−C coupling reactions of olefinic precursors will be described .
JEAN-FRANÇOIS PAQUIN studied chemistry at Université Laval (Quebec City, Canada) where he graduated with a B.Sc. degree in 1999. In 2004, he received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Toronto (Canada). After a postdoctoral stay at the ETH Zürich (Switzerland), he was appointed assistant professor in 2005 at Université Laval (Quebec City, Canada) as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry (2005-2010). In 2010, he was promoted to associate professor and his Canada Research Chair in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry renewed (2010-2015). He was promoted to Full Professor in 2014. He has been awarded, in 2015, a Humboldt Research Fellowship for a 6-month stay at the KIT in the group of Professor Anne S. Ulrich (Karlsruhe, Germany). In 2016, he received the Keith Fagnou Award from the Canadian Society of Chemistry. His research interests include the development of novel methodologies for the synthesis of organofluorine compounds and their applications for the preparation of bioactive fluorinated compounds or fluorinated biological probes. Jean-François has co-authored more than one hundred publications in addition to fifteen book chapters. He has presented more than one hundred invited lectures. Jean-François is a member of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) and the American Chemical Society (ACS). He has been a member-at-large on the executive committee of the Fluorine Chemistry Division of the ACS from 2013 to 2022. Finally, he was one of the co-hosts for the International Symposium on Fluorine Chemistry that took place in Quebec City in July 2023.
Recent advances in the chemistry of the pentafluorosulfanyl group.
Since its discovery, the pentafluorosulfanyl group (SF5) has been attracting its share of attention in organic chemistry. Considered as a “super CF3”, the SF5 group has interesting properties including, amongst others, a large dipole moment, a high lipophilicity and a strong electron-withdrawing capacity. These characteristics make it a substituent of choice in medicinal chemistry, agrochemistry and material sciences. In that context, the development of novel synthetic methods for the preparation of pentafluorosulfanylated molecules in an important objective.
This presentation will describe some of our recent efforts towards the development of novel synthetic strategies for the preparation of SF5-containing molecules.
