New Chemical Transformations Involving SO2F2-Mediated Alcohol Activation

Sulfuryl fluoride is a gas produced on a multi-ton scale for its use as a fumigant. In the last decades, it has gained interest in organic synthesis as a reagent with unique properties in terms of stability and reactivity when compared to other sulfur-based reagents. Sulfuryl fluoride has not only been used for sulfur-fluoride exchange (SuFEx) chemistry but also encountered applications in classic organic synthesis as an efficient activator of both alcohols and phenols, forming a triflate surrogate, namely a fluorosulfonate. A long-standing industrial collaboration in our research group drove our work on the sulfuryl fluoride-mediated transformations that will be highlighted below. We will first describe recent works on metal-catalyzed transformations from aryl fluorosulfonates while emphasizing the one-pot processes from phenol derivatives. In a second section, nucleophilic substitution reactions on polyfluoroalkyl alcohols will be discussed and the value of polyfluoroalkyl fluorosulfonates in comparison to alternative triflate and halide reagents will be brought to light.