A nice way to start this 2012? Being recognized. This is what happened to Vladimir Grushin and his research group: their latest publication in JACS is the most read paper of the journal over the past month.
‘Direct Cupration of Fluoroform’ reports the first reaction of direct cupration of fluoroform, by far the best and cheapest commercial CF3 source. All the reagents involved are also low-cost and commercially available chemicals. The reaction occurs within seconds, at room temperature and atmospheric pressure to give CuCF3 solutions in nearly quantitative yield. These fluoroform-derived CuCF3 reagents can be used for trifluoromethylation of a variety of organic and inorganic electrophiles, including aryl and heteroaryl halides.
Patent applications to ICIQ have been filed.
Alessandro Zanardi, Maxim A. Novikov, Eddy Martin, Jordi Benet-Buchholz, and Vladimir V. Grushin
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2011, 133 (51), pp 20901–20913.