Unusual reactions of Grignard reagents toward fluoroalkylated esters

Fluorine-containing esters were demonstrated to be convenient substrates for construction of the corresponding ketones by low temperature reaction with Grignard reagents followed by warming up to 0 °C, while heating the mixture up to 80 °C readily promoted the reduction of the ketones obtained by the generated magnesium alkoxides whose mechanism was speculated as Meerwein–Ponndorf–Verley type reduction by computational technique.