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The asymmetric ring opening of five meso- and three racemic epoxides with different fluorinating reagents in the presence of stoichiometric or slightly sub-stoichiometric amounts of Jacobsen's enantiopure (salen)chromium chloride complex A gave the corresponding optically active vicinal fluorohydrins. Silver fluoride was used as one of the fluoride sources either in the presence of Bu4N+H2F3− in diethyl ether or in acetonitrile. The latter reactions starting from cyclohexene oxide (1) showed maximum 72% ee in the formed fluorohydrin 2 isolated in 90% yield. From other meso-epoxides such as cyclopentene oxide and cycloheptene oxide the corresponding fluorohydrins were isolated in 80% and 82% yield with 65% and 62% ee, respectively. In case of ring opening under similar conditions of the racemic styrene oxide or phenyl glycidyl ether 83% and 75% of the fluorohydrins with fluorine in the primary position were isolated with 74% ee and 65% ee, respectively. Tetrahydronaphthalene oxide yielded a 2:1 mixture of trans- (23% ee) and cis-2-fluoro-3,4-benzocyclohexenol (2% ee) suggesting competing SN2 and SN1 type ring openings. Other epoxides such as cyclooctene oxide, cis-stilbene oxide and α-methylstyrene oxide did not react or gave the fluorohydrins with very small enantiomeric excess.
Haufe et al. (Fri,) studied this question.