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The little, juvenile and aggressive “fluorine atom” is growing up

WALTER NAVARRINI
Member of Chimica Oggi / Chemistry Today’s Scientific Advisory Board

The little, juvenile and aggressive “fluorine atom” is growing up andalso his situation is becoming your prime focus. Fluorine atom isdefinitively unique and confers distinctive molecular properties tomany fluorine containing compounds studied for relevantdevelopments. Surprisingly, “the little fluorine” carried out thedesired job in countless applications. Its behaviour “wonderful orterrible” is distinctive for the reason that it is possible to replace anyhydrogen in an organic molecule or macromolecule with fluorineatom, creating an infinite extension of completely synthetic organicchemistry, since very few compounds containing carbon-fluorinebonds are present in nature (1). Starting from the discovery of PTFFby Roy Plunkett, serendipity is quite frequent in fluorine chemistry,also due to the infinite number of possible compounds and relatedproperties. ...