Preparation and utility of organic pentafluorosulfanyl-containing compounds

The utility of the pentafluorosulfanyl group in medicinal, agrichemical, and materials applications is expanding. The innovative preparation of pentafluorosulfanylarenes in an economic and efficient process without the need for molecular fluorine may be the most transformative advance of all. the cost of pentafluorosulfanyl substitution can be dramatically reduced, perhaps to a cost similar to that of trifluoromethyl substituents, thereby expanding the number of SF₅-containing building blocks available to discovery chemists. Even with the breakthrough methods of Dolbier, the necessary pentafluorosulfanyl halide reagents remain difficult to prepare and expensive. Reactions of these precious reagents are limited to radical addition processes, a property that dramatically constrains options for late-stage introduction of the functional group.