Mechanistic insights for the photoredox organocatalytic fluorination of aliphatic carbons by anthraquinone using time-resolved and DFT studies

Chemoselective photoredox fluorination is an appealing approach to access fluorinated fine chemicals such as active pharmaceutical ingredients, but most of the known procedures currently lack time-resolved mechanistic insights. We use nanosecond transient absorption spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to elucidate the elementary steps after irradiation in a photocatalytic fluorination procedure that we reported previously. Time-resolved optical spectroscopy suggests that direct reaction only occurs between the photoexcited anthraquinone (AQN) and Selectfluor®. We have observed spectroscopic evidence of a novel transient AQN-Selectfluor® species for the first time. Further studies by DFT calculations suggest that the AQN-Selectfluor® triplet exciplex formed by photoirradiation is responsible for initiating and sustaining the fluorination reaction.