Next Generation Chiral Fluorine Groups for Molecular Design

Fluorinated motifs have enormous societal relevance due to their ubiquity across the pharmaceutical, agrochemical and materials science sectors.

These essential structural components feature prominently in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) list of essential medicines, and contribute to global food supplies by optimising the performance of many key agrochemicals.

Similarly, our reliance on (polyfluorinated) materials ranging from non-stick Teflon® through to smart materials underscores the versatility of fluorinated groups in functional small molecule design.

The historic success of fluorinated groups in societally-important molecules, coupled with scarcity of organofluorine building blocks in nature, continues to create a powerful impetus to develop more efficient and sustainable methods to facilitate their construction.

However, the environmental impact of perfluorinated materials has come under scrutiny due to the persistence of the materials in the environment.

The recent proposal by the European Parliament to address the persistence of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS-type molecules) in water supplies covers ""any substance that contains at least one fully fluorinated methyl (CF3) or methylene (CF2) without any H, Cl, Br, or I attached to it."" Fluorinated groups that simultaneously conform to new legislative guidance, no longer pose an environmental threat and open up new areas of space for discovery will be generated efficiently.

Through the intervention of ChiroFluor, unique structural entities such as the BITE group will be forged in both enantiomeric forms (handedness) to push chemical space beyond the existing boundaries.

This project will simultaneously address a pressing environmental and legislative issue in a sustainable manner using an organocatalytic I(I)/I(III) platform based on data generated in ERC Consolidator RECON (818949), and validated with key industrial partners.