Fluorous chemistry

Fluorous chemistry involves the use of perfluorinated compounds or perfluorinated substituents to facilitate recovery of a catalyst or reaction product. Perfluorinated groups impart unique physical properties including high solubility in perfluorinated solvents. This property can be useful in organic synthesis and separation methods such as solid phase extraction. In practice, a perfluorinated alkyl group is incorporated into an otherwise conventional organic reagent as an affinity tag. These reagents can then be separated from organic solvents by extraction with fluorinated solvents such as perfluorohexane.