Octafluoro-4,4′-bipyridine and its derivatives: Synthesis, molecular and crystal structure

The structure and chemical properties of perfluoro-4,4′-bipyridine have been studied. It was found that octafluoro-4,4′-bipyridine is a quite electron deficient system stable to the action of alkylating agents and sensitive to nucleophilic substitution of fluorine atoms. Depending on the reaction conditions and reagents used products could be obtained in which two and six fluorine atoms are substituted by nucleophiles. For all isolated compounds X-ray structure determination has been performed and the main peculiarities of the molecular and crystal structure of fluorine-containing bipyridines have been determined.