Swarts Reaction

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Treating an alkyl bromide with a metallic fluoride such as antimony trifluoride or silver fluoride is used industrially to introduce which atom into the molecule?

RankGuru · Accepted Answer

Alkyl fluorides are difficult to prepare directly because fluorine reacts too violently and direct halogenation is uncontrollable. The Swarts reaction solves this by heating an alkyl chloride or bromide with a metallic fluoride such as AgF, Hg2F2, CoF2 or SbF3, which delivers fluorine through a halogen-exchange step and yields the corresponding alkyl fluoride. The chlorine option is wrong because chlorine is the halogen being replaced, not introduced. Iodine is incorrect since iodide is introduced by the Finkelstein reaction with sodium iodide, a different procedure. Bromine is wrong because the bromine in the starting alkyl bromide is being displaced by fluoride, so no new bromine enters. This reaction is the standard NCERT route to fluoroalkanes and underlies the manufacture of freons used as refrigerants. Sanity check: the product is an alkyl fluoride, so fluorine is the atom introduced, consistent with using a metal fluoride reagent as the fluorine source.

Swarts Reaction

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