A Green Chemistry Approach - Microwave Assisted Organic Synthesis

Recent advances in microwave-assisted combinatorial chemistry include high-speed solid-phase and polymer supported organic synthesis, rapid parallel synthesis of compound libraries, and library generation by automated sequential microwave irradiation. In addition, new instrumentation for high-throughput microwave-assisted synthesis continues to be developed at a steady pace. The impressive speed combined with the unmatched control over reaction parameters justifies the growing interest in this application of microwave heating. The rapid parallel synthesis of combinatorial libraries of functionalized pyridines in 96-well plates by microwave irradiation in a domestic microwave oven. Chemical reactions, performed using MAOS techniques, are rapid mainly because the reactions are performed at higher temperatures than their conventional counterparts. The modern microwave based synthesizers can achieve temperatures of up to 250 0C and pressures of up to 20 bars allowing reactions to be carried out at higher temperatures than their reflux counterparts.