The relative stabilities of two fluorous analogs, diisopropyl (3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,9,9,10,10,10-heptadecafluorodecyl)silyl and diisopropyl-(4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,9,9,10,10,11,11,11-heptadecafluoroundecyl)silyl [C 8 F 17 (CH 2 ) n Si(i-Pr) 2 , where n = 2 or 3], of the standard triisopropylsilyl (TIPS) group are compared in the setting of alcohol protection. The fluorous silyl groups can be installed under standard conditions in comparable yields to the TIPS group, but the derived fluorous silyl ethers are more labile than TIPS ethers towards cleavage by both acids and fluoride.Keywords fluorous chemistry; protecting groups; relative reactivity; triisopropylsilyl group Fluorous protecting groups [1] have been extensively used recently in diversity-oriented synthesis, natural products synthesis and fluorous mixture synthesis. Such groups typically serve a dual role of protecting a given functional group and enabling a fluorous separation. In diversity-oriented synthesis [2] and natural products synthesis,[3] the separation method is usually a fluorous solid-phase extraction, [4] which separates fluorous components from nonfluorous ones. In fluorous mixture synthesis, [5] the method is a fluorous HPLC, [6] which resolves differentially tagged fluorous components of a mixture into individual compounds.Fluorous protecting groups are usually fashioned after parent (standard) protecting groups, and available protecting groups for alcohols include fluorous analogs of tetrahydropyranyl (THP), [7] p-methoxyben-zyl (PMB), [8] and methoxymethyl (MOM) groups,[9] among others. Assorted fluorous silyl groups are also available,[10] and we have often used a fluorous analog of the parent triisopropylsilyl (TIPS) group that we usually call F TIPS (Figure 1). [11] An understanding of the relative reactivity and stability of fluorous protecting groups is essential for synthetic planning. Fluorous groups that closely resemble the structure of their parents and that have suitable spacers can be expected to have comparable reactivities to the parent groups.[12] For example, the fluorous PMB ( F PMB) group in Figure 1 is structurally very similar to the parent PMB group, and the protected functionality is relatively well insulated from the perfluoroalkyl group (Rf) by a propylene spacer. In contrast, the parent TIPS group may not be such good model for the F TIPS group for two reasons: 1) the F TIPS group is not an analog of a triisopropylsilyl group but instead a 1°-alkyl (diisopropylsilyl) group, and 2) the ethylene spacer may not be a sufficient insulator. Thus, the F TIPS group may differ in reactivity and stability from TIPS for both steric and electronic reasons. We report here observations showing that two fluorous TIPS groups differ in reactivity from each other and from the parent TIPS group. These observations will help in selection of suitable fluorous protecting groups during synthetic planning.We first observed differences between TIPS and F TIPS groups during a fluorous mixture synthesis of a natural pro...