The Promising Future of Fluoropolymers

Abstract

This article aims at showing the usefulness of fluoropolymers (FPs), supplying an overview of their synthesis, applications, and recycling. FPs are currently prepared by conventional radical polymerization of fluoromonomers. These specialty polymers, produced in low tonnage compared to that of commodity ones, display outstanding properties, such as chemical, oxidative, and thermal resistances, low refractive index, dissipation factor, permittivity, and water absorptivity, and excellent weatherability and durability. More recent routes for their preparations are suggested, controlled or not, leading to random, alternated, block, graft, dendrimers, or multiarm copolymers, as well as their applications ranging from coatings to high performance (thermoplastic) elastomers, energy related-materials (e.g., fuel cell membranes, components for lithium-ion batteries, electroactive devices, and photovoltaics) to original and surfactants, optical devices, organic electronics, composites, and shape memory polymers.

Perfluoropyridine: Discovery, Chemistry, and Applications in Polymers and Material Science

“…Adding to the properties observed with simple organofluorine compounds, fluoropolymers and materials are also endowed with having low dielectric constants, refractive indexes, surface energy, flammability, and water absorptivity [ 51 ]. Furthermore, these materials are often more mechanically durable and morphologically diverse [ 52 ]. With such robust attributes, this unique class of materials has found use in a variety of specialized areas including the aerospace and automotive industries, advanced surfaces and coatings, medical devices, structural components, and many more [ 53 , 54 ].…”

Electrochemical Trifluoromethylselenolation of Activated Alkyl Halides

“…Since 1954 and the discovery of fludrocortisone 1 (Scheme 1A), fluorine‐containing molecules keep flourishing and have found applications in the fields of medicinal and agrochemical chemistry as well as material science [1–16] . Strikingly, about three out of the five top‐selling drugs bear at least one fluorine atom with atorvastatin 2 (Lipitor) being the best‐selling pharmaceutical (Scheme 1A) [3,17] .…”

Silylboronate-Mediated Defluorosilylation of Aryl Fluorides with or without Ni-Catalyst

“…Organofluorine compounds have been critical over the past few decades in pharmaceutical ( Inoue et al, 2020 ), agrochemical ( Ogawa et al, 2020 ), functional materials ( Hiyama, 2000 ; Babudri et al, 2007 ; Berger et al, 2011 ; Liu et al, 2017 ; Liu et al, 2019 ) and polymer ( Améduri et al, 2020 ) industries. The progress of synthetic technologies exemplified by fluorination ( Rozen et al, 1996 ; Shibata et al, 2007 ; Furuya et al, 2011 ; Campbell et al, 2015 ; Ni et al, 2015 ; Lee et al, 2016 ; Zhu et al, 2018 ) and trifluoromethylation ( Ma et al, 2004 ; Shibata et al, 2008 ; Shibata et al, 2010 ; Merino et al, 2014 ; Liu et al, 2015 ; Charpentier et al, 2015 ; Alonso et al, 2015 ; Xiao et al, 2021 ) reactions has expressively supported such success and prosperity of organofluorine compounds.…”