Fluorous Biphase Solvents

6-10 carbons are much less volatile and therefore pose less threat. The longer-term consequences of significant amounts of these products entering the environment are still unknown. 

When choosing a particular solvent for a specific application a wide range of factors should be considered, including some not directly related to the specific application. Obviously cost, efficacy and safety need to be considered first, and these will generally rule out some options. Following this a more detailed assessment of additional factors should be carried out, ideally including  

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Remarkably, the use of a fluorous biphasic solvent system in combination with a [Rh(NBD)(DPPE)]+-type catalyst (NBD = norbornadiene) copolymerized into a porous nonfluorous ethylene dimethacrylate polymer, resulted in an increased activity of the catalyst relative to a situation when only toluene was used as solvent [30]. The results were explained by assuming that fluorophobicity of the substrate (methyl-trans-cinnamate) leads to a relatively higher local substrate concentration inside the cavities of the polymer when the fluorous solvent is used. That is, the polymer could be viewed as a better solvent than the fluorous solvent system. This interpretation was supported by the observations that (i) the increase in activity correlates linearly with the volume fraction of fluorous solvent (PFMCH) and (ii) the porous ethylene dimethacrylate polymer by itself lowers the concentration of decane in PFMCH from 75 mM to 50 mM, corresponding to a 600 mM local concentration of decane in the polymer. Gas to liquid mass transport limitation of dihydrogen could be mled out as a possible cause. 

Grigg, R. and York, M. (2000) Bimetallic catalytic cascade ring-closing metathesis-intramolecular Heck reactions using a fluorous biphasic solvent system or a polymer-supported palladium catalyst. Tetrahedron Lett., 41, 7255-8. 

The most important biphasic liquid systems are probably those that combine a conventional organic phase with another type of solvent, such as water, a fluorous organic solvent, or an ionic liquid [3]. In those cases the solvent can be considered as the support for the catalyst phase and we have therefore limited the examples in this review to those where the recycled liquid catalyst phase is recovered as a whole. 

The term fluorous biphase has been proposed to cover fully fluorinated hydrocarbon solvents (or other fluorinated inert materials, for example ethers) that are immiscible with organic solvents at ambient conditions. Like ionic liquids the ideal concept is that reactants and catalysts would be soluble in the (relatively high-boiling) fluorous phase under reaction conditions but that products would readily separate into a distinct phase at ambient conditions (Figure 5.5). 

Various other biphasic solutions to the separation problem are considered in other chapters of this book, but an especially attractive alternative was introduced by Horvath and co-workers in 1994.[1] He coined the term catalysis in the fluorous biphase and the process uses the temperature dependent miscibility of fluorinated solvents (organic solvents in which most or all of the hydrogen atoms have been replaced by fluorine atoms) with normal organic solvents, to provide a possible answer to the biphasic hydroformylation of long-chain alkenes. At temperatures close to the operating temperature of many catalytic reactions (60-120°C), the fluorous and organic solvents mix, but at temperatures near ambient they phase separate cleanly. Since that time, many other reactions have been demonstrated under fluorous biphasic conditions and these form the basis of this chapter. The subject has been comprehensively reviewed, [2-6] so this chapter gives an overview and finishes with some process considerations. 

Fluorous biphasic systems operate on the premise that the catalyst complex is preferentially soluble in the fluorous phase. This is achieved by synthesising fluorinated ligands that have a high weight-percentage of fluorine. It has been reported that for a complex to be preferentially soluble in fluorous solvents it must contain >60... 

Recently, the fluorous biphasic separation technique has been enriched with two new developments, both of which were demonstrated in hydrogenation. The need for a fluorous solvent can be eliminated by using fluorous silica as a fluorous catalyst scavenger. In liquid-liquid biphasic systems, reversible expan-... 

Despite their vast untapped potential, techniques like fluorous biphasic catalysis still have limitations. These limitations center on solubility and emanate directly from the strengths of the technique heavily fluorous compounds tend to be highly insoluble in organic solvents while organic compounds (especially polar ones) tend to be highly... 

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