Stereoelectronic effects can have a significant influence in pharmaceutical research. Generally, the substitution of hydrogen by fluorine could be regarded as a way to tune both the hydrophobicity and the metabolic stability of a drug candidate. Moreover, it can have a profound influence on conformations, often due to stereoelectronic effects, in addition to normal steric effects resulting from the larger size of the fluorine atom. For instance, the ground state geometries of anisole (methoxybenzene) and (trifluoromethoxy)benzene differ dramatically.  In anisole, the methyl group prefers to be coplanar with the phenyl group, while (trifluoromethoxy)benzene favors a geometry in which the [C(aryl)–C(aryl)–O–C(F)] dihedral angle is around 90°.  In other words, the O–CF bond is perpendicular to the plane of the phenyl group.
Further studies illustrate that even for only one or two hydrogen atoms in a methyl group being replaced by a fluorine atom, the distortion in the structure can also be significant, with the [C(aryl)–C(aryl)–O–C(HF)] dihedral angle in the energy minimized structure being around 24° and the [C(aryl)–C(aryl)–O–C(HF)] dihedral angle 33°.