Reaction Selectivity Control in Flash Synthetic Chemistry

Abstract

Organic synthesis is an essential technology to create functional materials such as pharmaceuticals, plastics and electronics materials, and has enriched our lives. Recently chemicals having more complicated structure have been required to realize sophisticated materials. Chemoselective reaction is one of the most important tools for synthesizing such complicated compounds and is achieved by optimizing reaction conditions, using appropriate reagents, utilizing difference of reaction rate and so on. When we utilize the difference of reaction rate, chemoselectivity was sometimes not enough in macro batch system because a volume of reaction system is large and heat and mass transfers are not efficient. On the other hand, microreactors have small reaction space and heat and mass transfer become more efficient. Thus better chemoselectivity according to reaction kinetics can be accomplished. In this review, we explained the reason why heat and mass transfer were more efficient in microreactor than in macro batch system. Then, examples of chemoselective reactions using microreactors were introduced. Finally, one-flow and multi-step reactions by integrating of microreactors were also introduced.