Nucleophilic perfluoroalkylation of diaryldisulfides with perfluorocarboxylate salts

A new industrial and economical route to trifluoromethyl aryl sulfides by thermal decarboxylation of trifluoroacetate salts has been recently developed. The possibility of generalising this reaction of trifluorodecarboxylation to RfCO2K (R-f: CCl3, CF2Cl, CF3CF2, CF3CF2CF2) in order to synthesise RfSAr has been studied. Thus, the reaction was effective with RfCO2K (R-f = CCl3, CF3CF2) and a new route to aryl pentafluoroethyl sulfides CF3CF2SAr has been briefly exemplified. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.