New Methods for the Synthesis of Trifluoromethyl Organometallic Compounds

Abstract

The state of the synthetic art in this area, in 1979, is much more satisfactory. During the past decade, several new synthetic developments have occurred, such that we are closer to the point where the limitations upon synthesis of trifluoromethyl compounds are related more to stability problems in isolated cases, and are not nearly so much due to lack of widely applicable synthetic techniques. We find ourselves, for example, in a position in 1979, where the germanium compound, Ge(CF 3 ) 4 , which in the past decade, was considered by many workers to be of insufficient stability to permit isolation, has been prepared by four independent methods and is known to be stable to over 100°C. Indeed, the literature contains many rationalizations, based on suppositions of instability of compounds, for the failure of certain synthetic methods to afford highly substituted trifluoromethyl compounds that are now known to be stable, in many cases to temperature of over 100°C.