Fluorine Chemistry

Fluorinated chemicals find widespread use in hundreds of applications, such as anti-corrosion or anti-icing coatings, liquid-repellent textiles, oil/water separation, fire-fighting foams, paints, pharmaceuticals, and surfactants. Unfortunately, they do not degrade under enzymatic or metabolic conditions, thus showing long-term persistence in the environment and strong tendency to bioaccumulate.
Our research in this field focuses mainly on two topics:
- design of more sustainable highly branched fluorinated compounds, as a ‘greener’ alternative to linear long-chain perfluorocarbons for the development of super-repellent and self-cleaning surfaces, surfactants/emulsifiers, and ¹⁹F-tracers for bioimaging purposes.
- use of Hydrophobins, a class of extremely surface-active and film-forming proteins produced by filamentous fungi, as a natural surfactant for stabilizing fluorinated coatings on apolar surfaces and preparing stable aqueous dispersions of various fluorinated nanoaggregates.

Selected recent publications:

• Pigliacelli C., Acocella A., Díez I., Moretti L., Dichiarante V., Demitri N., Jiang H., Maiuri M., Ras R.H.A., Baldelli Bombelli F., Cerullo G., Zerbetto F., Metrangolo P., Terraneo G., High-resolution crystal structure of a 20 kDa superfluorinated gold nanocluster. Nat Commun 2022, 13, 2607
• Rosati M., Acocella A., Pizzi A., Turtù G., Neri G., Demitri N., Nonappa, Raffaini G., Donnio B., Zerbetto F., Baldelli Bombelli F., Cavallo G., Metrangolo P., Janus-Type Dendrimers Based on Highly Branched Fluorinated Chains with Tunable Self-Assembly and ¹⁹F Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Properties. Macromolecules 2022, 55, 2486-2496
• Tedeschi G., Guzman-Puyol S., Ceseracciu L., Benitez J.J., Goldoni L., Koschella A., Heinze T., Cavallo G., Dichiarante V., Terraneo G., Athanassiou A., Metrangolo P., José A.Heredia-Guerrero J.A., Waterproof-breathable films from multi-branched fluorinated cellulose esters. Carbohydr. Polym. 2021, 271, 118031
• Cavallo G., Abate A., Rosati M., Paolo Venuti G., Pilati T., Terraneo G., Resnati G., Metrangolo P., Tuning of Ionic Liquid Crystal Properties by Combining Halogen Bonding and Fluorous Effect. ChemPlusChem 2021, 86, 469-474
• Celentano W., Neri G., Distante F., Li M., Messa P., Chirizzi C., Chaabane L., De Campo F., Metrangolo P., Baldelli Bombelli F., Cellesi F., Design of fluorinated hyperbranched polyether copolymers for ¹⁹F MRI nanotheranostics. Polym. Chem. 2020, 11, 3951-3963