Friday, September 12, 2008

Fluorene, what's it good for?

I've been culling items from our organic stockroom. This task has been long overdue. I have bottles of things that were filled before the EPA and OSHA even existed. They were filled before benzene started causing cancer.

I found a 1 pound bottle of fluorene. Fluorene puts the F in FMOC and the F in a lot of other things.

My question is, does anybody know what uses plain, old, ordinary 9H-fluorene has?

I know the proton can be removed relatively easily and then it probably acts as a nucleophile.

It can also be oxidized to fluorenone using a phase transfer catalyst.



What else can I do with my newly discovered stash of fluorene?

8 comments:

milkshake said...

you can use it to make fluorenyl methyl alcohol, a protecting group material.

Ψ*Ψ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lisa-tastrophies said...

Oh yeah, you lost me at FMOC.
Sorry, my chemistry is limited to ETOH + CLOSING TIME = me and a very bad decision.
Maybe Mjenks has a better use. He seems to like to play in the lab a lot :-)
Good luck with the chemistry.

Chemgeek said...

Ψ*Ψ,

Can what you refer to be incorporated into an organic lab?

Lisa,

sorry. I have to legitimize my "Chemistry" blog by including some actual chemistry every now and then. It make me feel better.

Ψ*Ψ said...

Possibly. I'll have to read a few of them more carefully and see how difficult the synthesis looks. OLED fabrication is super easy, though. :)

Lisa-tastrophies said...

Ok, then. You're forgiven. I understand the need for legitimacy. I am actually a little on the envious side since my chem days were limited to using the academic version of Legos and getting a head-ache from having my forehead creased in the "WHAT????" position during lecture hall.

but, technically, isn't home brewing a form of chemistry and therefore counts as chemistry related? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Did you mean NaOCl instead of NaOH?

Chemgeek said...

Nope, it should be NaOH, but I should have included oxygen as the oxidizer.