Energy saving and environment-friendly element-transfer reactions with industrial application potential

Herein we wish to propose the concept of “element-transfer reaction”, which may afford the access to elemental compounds by transferring certain elements from easily available resources efficiently, concisely and precisely. A good element-transfer reaction with industrial application potential shall not generate waste and is performed under energy-saving and environment-friendly conditions. During the past decade, we have developed a series of methods for the synthesis of fluorine- and selenium-containing compounds via the fluorine- and selenium-transfer reactions, while the redox reactions were considered to be the oxygen- and hydrogen-transfer reactions as well and were also widely studied by our group for producing the high-value-added fine chemicals. Some of these technologies have been successfully industrialized. This review summarizes our staged research results on fluorine-, oxygen-, hydrogen- and selenium-transfer reactions and makes a prospect on the developing trend in the field.