Recent advances on defluorinative carboxylation and decarboxylative fluorination of arenes

Compared with most studies in the field of CO2 utilization, which focused on the carboxylation of C-I, C−Br, C−Cl, C−B, C-Si, C-O bonds, the direct defluorinative carboxylation of C−F bonds is more challenging due to the much higher bond dissociation energy and less reactivity of C−F bonds, for which it is difficult to initiate the oxidative addition process under mild conditions. Recently, various catalytic systems have been developed that allow the direct carboxylation of inert C-F bonds with atmospheric CO2 and provide versatile methodologies for green synthesis of carboxylic acid derivatives. This review focuses on recent advances in this challenging and hot research topic with special emphasis on the mechanistic details of the reaction pathways.