Significant advancement in the preparation of fascinating fluoroorganics is highly desirable in view of their limited natural occurrence and ever-increasing applications in medicinal and material sciences. Ionic liquids act as the most promising green media for a variety of nucleophilic and electrophilic fluorinations in terms of chemoselectivity, reaction yields, reusability, operational simplicity and scalability. The use of these designer solvents in stimulating the electrified synthesis of fluorinated compounds is also appreciable due to their tuneable electrochemical characteristics. Recent innovations in fluorination techniques depict the substantial role of ionic liquids in fluorotransformations such as the use of tagged ionic liquids in nucleophilic fluorinations, ionic liquid assisted biological fluorination, enantioselective fluorinations using chiral electrophilic reagents along with ionic liquid media, use of task-specific ionic liquids with mediators in electrochemical fluorinations and ionic liquid promoted electrifying synthesis of medicinally important fluorinated heteroaromatics and radiopharmaceuticals.
Keywords: Ionic liquids, fluorinations, nucleophilic, electrophilic, electrochemical, environment-friendly.