Research summary
Organofluorine chemistry is an emerging field with an ever-growing number of potential applications. It focuses on the chemistry of organic compounds that contain the carbon-fluorine bond. These compounds have diverse uses, from drugs to fertilizers to reagents in catalysis (the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a catalyst). But organofluorine chemistry requires greener chemical processes and shorter syntheses times if we are to make the most of its potential.
As Canada Research Chair in Organofluorine Chemistry and Catalysis, Dr. Jean-Denys Hamel is using catalysis to develop fluorinative transformations, functionalize fluorinated compounds, and enable defluorinative processes using C-H, C-C and C-F bond scission (the splitting of chemical bonds). Ultimately, he and his research team hope to enable greener and more efficient chemical processes for preparing and using organofluorine compounds.