On 16-17th of January 2008, the 7-member expert panel appointed by Department of Chemical Science of NSFC leaded by Licheng Song, carried a mid-term evaluation for two organic key projects of CAS, which are “Selective Control of Organic Chemistry Reactions” and “The forefront Research in Organic Fluorine Chemistry”.

The “Selective Control of Organic Chemistry Reactions" key project was in charged of by Xuelong Hou, Researcher Fellow. The project team experimental and theoretical studied the hydrogen bond, the electronic effect of catalysts, stereo selective effect, the effect of central metal atoms, the structure of substrate and other factors acting on the reaction activity and selectivity They realized control of the reaction selectivity in a few reactions by these factors. After two years of hard work, the important progress had been made for the selective control of reaction in both the theory and practice. It provides new means and ways to selective control of reaction. So far the project team had already published 17 papers in the Acc. Chem. Res., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Adv. Synth. Catal., J. Org. Chem. and other important international journals.

The project team of the “The forefront Research in Organic Fluorine Chemistry" key project was in charged of by Qingyun Chen, Academician of CAS. They achieved the selective synthesis of fluorine-containing alkyl porphyrins through adjusting of free radical of fluoroalkyl activity, activating carbon-chlorine bond. The catalytic oxidation, liquid crystal properties and molecular self-assembly was also studied.

Use of trifluoromethyl reaction, they successfully synthesis the 20pe (e) non-aromatic compounds porphyria which proposed by Woodward a half-century ago through the metal palladium-catalyzed cross - coupling reaction and chemical reduction. They got the fluorine-containing compounds and measured its single-crystal structure by efficient and easy way. They also studied the weak intermolecular interactions such as halogen containing bond. Difluoro carbene, fluorine-containing azide and fluorine-containing diazo were studied, and they synthesized of fluorine-containing heterocyclic compounds such as difluoride methylene nicotine by some unique chemical reactions.

The project team had already published 80 papers in the J. Am. Chem. Soc., Chem. Eur. J., Org. Lett., Chem. Commun., J. Org. Chem., Adv. Synth. Catal. And other important international journals, obtain seven patents in China and a second-class award of Shanghai Natural Science in 2007.

The expert panel heard the final reports of the two projects and was agreed that the project team carried out the research work in plan, and had been made significant progress. The results of medium-term evaluation are both rated as excellent. The panel recommended that the project team continued to develop its own research characteristics, completed the study objectives in the next two years.

The meeting presided over by the Academician Guoqiang Lin, Director of the Chemistry Department of NSFC. Yongjun Chen, Deputy Director of the Chemistry Department of NSFC and Canping Du Director of Department of Organic Chemistry of NSFC, Professor Shizheng Zhu of Department of Organic Chemistry of NSFC attended the meeting.

Scientific Research Management Office