New access to direct aromatic CH-fluorination with tailor-made palladium catalyst discovered: Professor Tobias Ritter publishes interesting research results for medicinal chemistry in "nature".

Electrophilic aromatic halogenation reactions have been known for more than 100 years for Cl, Br, and I, but no general direct fluorination has been available, especially not for complex molecules, for example pharmaceuticals. The team of Professor Tobias Ritter of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung has now discovered a new method for direct aromatic C-H-fluorination using a palladium catalyst. The new reaction mechanism could give quick access to promising drug and agrochemical candidates that may otherwise not have been evaluated because there was no easy way to make them. Ritter describes the new method in the article „Palladium-catalysed electrophilic aromatic CH-fluorination“ now published in „Nature“.

Tobias Ritter says: “Aromatic C-H fluorination is far from being a solved problem, but our work could provide a first step complementing the beautiful work on aliphatic C-H fluorination that has been published over the last few years.”

Photo: Prof. Tobias Ritter, @ Frank Vinken for MPI für Kohlenforschung