Comprehensive Energetic Scale for Quantitatively Estimating the Fluorinating Potential of N-F Reagents in Electrophilic Fluorinations.

Quantitative knowledge of the fluorinating strength of electrophilic N-F reagents is of crucial importance for rational design and optimization of novel reagents and new reactions. Herein, we report the first systematic computation of fluorinating potentials of 130 electrophilic N-F reagents in two commonly used solvents dichloromethane and acetonitrile in terms of the N-F bond heterolysis energies as expressed by the fluorine plus detachment (FPD) values. The calculated FPD scales of 130 N-F reagents cover a range from 112.3 to 290.4 kcal mol(-1) and 110.9 to 278.4 kcal mol(-1) in dichloromethane and acetonitrile, respectively. This comprehensive FPD database provides a valuable quantitative guide for studying the influence of structural variation on the fluorinating strength of the N-F reagents, opening a door to the rational design of novel reagents with appropriate fluorinating strength for specific purposes. It is demonstrated that the FPD values can reproduce the reactivity order for electrophilic N-F reagents better than other parameters.