Development and Applications of a Practical Continuous Flow Microwave Cell

Abstract

A series of synthetic transformations were successfully and safely scaled up to multigram quantities using focused microwave irradiation with a continuous flow reaction cell that was developed in-house and which can be easily adapted to commercially available instrumentation. The representative reactions that were investigated included aromatic nucleophilic substitution (SNAr), esterification, and the Suzuki cross-coupling reaction. In general, the product yields were equivalent to or greater than those run under conventional thermal heating conditions.