Very efficient nucleophilic aromatic fluorination reaction in molten salts: A mechanistic study

Abstract

We report a quantum chemical study of an extremely efficient nucleophilic aromatic fluorination in molten salts. We describe that the mechanism involves solvent anion interacting with the ion pair nucleophile M +F - (M = Na, K, Rb, Cs) to accelerate the reaction. We show that our proposed mechanism may well explain the excellent efficiency of molten salts for SNAr reactions, the relative efficacy of the metal cations, and also the observed large difference in rate constants in two molten salts (n-C 4H 9) 4N + CX 3SO 3-, (X=H, F) with slightly different sidechain (-CH 3 vs. -CF 3).