organic chemistry - Is there a haloalkane for astatine?

I'm studying organic chemistry, and I noticed that there are fluoro-, chloro-, bromo-, and iodoalkanes. However, there are none for Astatine. Could someone shed some light on this, and what it would be called?

Answer

Part of the reason why there has been very little research done on organoastatine chemistry is the extreme radioactivity of astatine; the half-life of $\ce{^210At}$, the longest-lived isotope, is about 8 hours. However, the element can be incorporated into organic compounds (e.g., via a destannylation reaction).¹

In organic chemistry, the prefix is "astato-", as in astatobenzene or 3-astatotamoxifen, both of which have been synthesized.^1,2 This is analogous to "fluoro-", "chloro-", and so on. As a general term, astatine compounds can be referred to as astatides (e.g. aryl astatides, analogous to aryl fluorides, chlorides, etc.).¹

The aforementioned synthesis of 3-astatotamoxifen is shown below.

As for inorganic nomenclature, astatine can be denoted with the prefix "astatido-"; this follows from the IUPAC Red Book for nomenclature of inorganic compounds.

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1. 
   

   Milius, R. A., W. H. McLaughlin, R. M. Lambrecht, A. P. Wolf, J. J. Carroll, S. J. Adelstein, and W. D. Bloomer. Appl. Radiat. Isot. 1986, 37 (8), 799-802.

   
   


2. 
   

   Samson, G., and A. H. W. Aten. Radiochimica Acta 1970, 13 (4), 220-221.