Oleg Ozerov , Texas A&M University, TAMU - 3255, College Station, TX, US, 77842 | Jennifer Love | Takahiko Akiyama

The challenge of carbon-fluorine bond activation summons interest from at least three directions: inorganic, organic and environmental chemistry. Practitioners of inorganic chemistry see C-F bond activation as a fundamental challenge to develop catalysts for facile cleavage of a bond viewed as a pinnacle of inertness. Given the disproportionate number of fluorinated pharmaceuticals that have emerged in recent years, organic chemistry would benefit from broader applicability of fluorocarbons as building blocks in synthesis and from methods to prepare fluorinated compounds through selective defluorination. A number of polyfluorinated organic compounds are persistent pollutants of either the atmosphere (fluorinated alkanes are super-greenhouse gases) or of soil and water (perfluorinated organic acids possess significant toxicity). Efforts towards their remediation attract attention from environmental chemists and the public at-large. This symposium aims to cover recent advances in synthetic approaches to activation of carbon-fluorine bonds in the context of broader issues of real-world impacts as well as to demonstrate the synergy between inorganic, organic, and environmental chemistry.