Pyrene-Tagged Ionic Liquids: Separable Organic Catalysts for SN2 Fluorination.

We prepared pyrene-substituted imidazolium-based ionic liquids (PILs) as organic catalysts for the SN2 fluorination using alkali metal fluoride (MF). In this system, the PIL significantly enhanced the reactivity of MF due to the phase-transfer catalytic effect of the imidazolium moiety as well as the metal cation-π (pyrene) interactions. Furthermore, this homogeneous catalyst PIL was easily separated from the reaction mixture using reduced graphene oxide by π-π stacking with the pyrene of PIL.