Electrochemical Fluorination of Vinyl Boronates Through Donor-Stabilized Vinyl Carbocation Intermediates

The electrochemical generation of vinyl carbocations from vinyl boronic esters and boronates is reported. Using easy-to-handle nucleophilic fluoride reagents, these intermediates are trapped to form fully substituted vinyl fluorides. Mech-anistic studies support the formation of dicoordinated car-bocations through sequential single-electron oxidation events. Notably, this electrochemical fluorination features fast reaction times and mild conditions. This transfor-mation provides a complementary method to access vinyl fluorides with simple fluoride salts such as TBAF.