Researchers investigate fluorinated compounds
Fluorinated compounds are widely used in the semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries. Their applications include electronic materials, solvents, lubricants and phase-transfer catalysts. Despite their many applications, their formation is a complex process: in particular, transition-metal catalyzed cross-coupling reactions to generate carbon-carbon bonds with fluorinated substrates are often hampered by the formation of strong metal-carbon bonds and other processes. The EU-funded 'Ring-walking, metal coordination and aryl-halide oxidative addition' (Ringwalk) project produced various findings relating specifically to late-transition metal-based stilbene and stilbazole complexes through metal-olefin coordination, metal ring-walking, and aryl-halide oxidative addition. In addition, the project generated a series of new materials which have been used by the researchers to study thin-film formation and fabricate solar cells. Moreover, since the development of molecular-based systems capable of information processing is a rapidly developing field, the researchers studied the role of the molecular structure and reaction parameters on the nature of thin-film growth. They generated electrochromic films using a versatile two-step assembly method with organic and metal-organic chromophores cross-linked with palladium.
