Potassium fluoride(KF) used for glass engraving, food preservative, electroplating. Can be used as welding flux, pesticides, organic compounds, fluoride, catalyst, absorbent (absorption of HF and water) and fluoride salts. It is also a raw material for preparing potassium hydrogen fluoride.

Organic Synthesis:

Potassium fluoride is widely used as a fluorinating agent for the preparation of various organic fluorides.

Recently, a new method for fluorination in ionic liquid-water systems has been proposed. The alkyl halide and alkylmethanesulfonyl substituents are treated with KF in the presence of [bmim] [BF4] to give a fluorinated product. The method can greatly improve the reactivity and selectivity of the fluoride.

In the presence of KF, hexafluoroalkyl- or hexafluorophenyltrimethylsilane is reacted with aldehydes, ketones and acyl fluorides to give fluoroalcohols. Sulfonyl fluoride as the substrate yields the sulfone in good yield. These reactions are usually carried out in dipole solvents such as MeCN and PhCN.

Potassium fluoride can promote the carbonyl coupling reaction of organic fluorosilane with iodoarenes under palladium catalysis.

The KF in DMSO is a good dehydrochlorination reagent. Halogenated or halogenated alkane in the role of KF can produce HCl, propadiene, alkene and conjugated diene and so on. The presence of crown ethers in the reaction system facilitates the elimination of the reaction, especially when MeCN is used as solvent. KF also promotes the alkylation of alcohols, phenols, thiols, amines with haloalkanes. This method has been used for the synthesis of crown ethers. The heterocycle may also be alkylated with an allyl halide. KF as a catalyst, the phenol can react with the activated aryl fluoride.

The addition of KF to the reaction of carboxylic acid and haloalkyl to ester can greatly improve the reaction yield. This reaction uses the reactant acid as the solvent; when the starting material is a solid, DMF can be used as the solvent. The substrate with the best reactivity is iodoalkane.

Potassium fluoride can also be used to promote the oxidation of Fischer alkoxy carbene complexes. Under the action of KF or Bu4NF, the metal portion of the Fischer alkoxycarbene complex can be oxidized to form the corresponding ester analog. The method is simple and the cost is low.