With the increasingly wide and important applications of fluorinated organic compounds in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, organofluorine chemistry has become a hot research area in organic chemistry over the past years. Chemical & Engineering News (C & E News), a weekly news magazine published by American Chemical Society (ACS), has paid special attention to this booming research area with its several Cover Stories.
On June 5, 2006, C & E News published a cover story article highlighting the importance of fluorinated fine chemicals to the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. In particular, the article paid attention to the research work done by scientists in Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), including the trifluoromethylation method by the research group of Professor Qing-Yun Chen (who is also the academician of CAS), as well as the difluoromethylation and monofluoromethylation methods by Professor Jinbo Hu and coworkers.
More recently, C & E News published another cover story article on February 27, 2012, updating the progress in the field of organofluorine chemistry (see the picture below). The article once again paid attention to the SIOC’s Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry. It reports, “… SIOC has a long history in fluorine chemistry…It even has a separate organofluorine department with 10 research groups”. The report also introduced the copper-mediated trifluoromethylation and trifluoromethylthiolation reactions recently developed by the research groups led by Professor Feng-Ling Qing and Professor Qilong Shen, respectively. It is noteworthy that, in the cover page of that particular issue of C & E News, the reporter (Stephen K. Ritter) listed 9 most recently developed metal-mediated fluorination reactions (which caught much attention both in academia and industry), among which 3 reactions were innovatively developed by SIOC’s Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry (see the picture below).
As one of the academic departments in SIOC, the CAS Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry is the only key laboratory in China that focuses on the oragnofluorine-related basic research and applied research. The laboratory has roughly 200 research scientists and graduate students, with the balanced age distribution from 20s to 80s. The Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry has high-notch experimental and analytical facilities, and over the past half century, the laboratory has carried out many important research programs fulfilling both the strategic requirements of the nation and the frontier of international organofluorine chemistry. Currently, the laboratory has won a good reputation as “Shanghai Fluorine Chemistry” in the global fluorine chemistry community.
 In the cover page of C & E News, 9 most recently developed metal-mediated fluorination reactions which caught much attention both in academia and industry was listed, among which 3 reactions were innovatively developed by SIOC’s Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry. (imaged by SIOC) |
