The recent advances in nucleophilic fluorination, regulated through hydrogen bonding interactions are summarized. Two main categories of fluorine nucleophiles are discussed. Alkali-metal fluorides are widely used in various fluorination transformations because they are inexpensive and safe nucleophilic fluorine sources. But the non-controllable nucleophilicity and strong basicity of some of them cause undesired side reactions, which led to the introduction of hydrogen bonding to fine tune their nucleophilicity and basicity. In contrast, an HF-based fluorine nucleophile, HF/DMPU, is in some aspects superior to the conventional HF/pyridine (Olah's reagent) or HF/Et N because of the higher hydrogen bond basicity of DMPU. It has been used in several nucleophilic fluorinations such as fluorination of alkynes, fluoro-Prins reaction and fluorination of aziridines.

Proline-based designer surfactant FI-750-M has been demonstrated to enable selective nucleophilic aromatic substitution of polyfluoro(hetero)arenes by sulfinate salts in water under mild micellar conditions.

We have developed a highly regioselective homogeneous gold(I)-catalyzed anti-hydrochlorination of unactivated alkynes at room temperature. We have overcome the incompatibility between conventional cationic gold catalysts and chloride by using a hydrogen-bonding activation of the Au–Cl bond. This approach is scalable, exhibits excellent functional group tolerance, and can be conducted in open air.

The combination of commercial easily available Au/TiO2 as catalyst and cost-effective formic acid as reductant was able to render reductive amination of various carbonyl compounds.

The combined acid catalyzed hydration of alkynes is an efficient one-step synthesis of carbonyl compounds. This atom-economical method is effective with a wide range of substrates, and the products are obtained in very good yields with low catalyst loading (0.2%). Furthermore, solid acids like Nafion were also efficient and could be easily recycled multiple times without loss of reactivity.

TiO2-supported nanosize gold particles catalyze the hydration of alkynes using morpholine as a basic cocatalyst. Unlike most homogeneous cationic gold catalysts, the TiO2-Au/morpholine system is weakly basic and is compatible with acid-sensitive functional groups (e.g., silyl ethers, ketals) or with a strongly coordinating group such as pyridine. What's more, this gold catalyst can be recycled by simple filtration and works well in flow reactors.

TiO2 supported gold nanoparticles with low loading (0.5 mol%) are able to semihydrogenate non-fluorinated and gem-difluorinated alkynes to cis-alkenes with high selectivity, using cost-effective and easy-to-handle ammonium formate as the reductant. No over-reduction was observed. The good recyclability of Au/TiO2 allows for "green" semireduction of alkynes. A difluorinated pyran and α,β-unsaturated δ-lactone were easily prepared from the obtained gem-difluoro alkene building blocks.

Commercial gold nanoparticles supported on titanium dioxide (TiO 2 )w eref ound to be ah ighly efficient catalyst for alkyne hydroamination. Te rminal alkynes could easily undergo intermolecular hydroamination with low catalyst loadings (0.2 mol% Au)u nder solvent-free conditions. Indoles were efficiently synthesizedu sing microwave heating through intramolecular hydroamination.