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Radial flow system decouples reactions in automated synthesis of organic molecules

Organic compounds can be synthesized in a continuous flow of solutions, but the need to balance mass flow across multiple reactors complicates the development of such systems. A new platform for flow chemistry addresses this issue.
  1. Klavs F. Jensen

    1. Klavs F. Jensen is in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

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The desire to perform chemical synthesis quickly and without tedious manual manipulations has long driven the development of automated chemical synthesizers. In a paper in Nature, Chatterjee and colleagues1 report an automated approach that they describe as radial synthesis. In their system, individually accessible compartments for performing reactions are arranged around a central hub that coordinates reagent delivery, product sampling and chemical analysis, and the temporary storage of compounds produced as intermediates. The authors’ approach not only promises to reduce manual manipulation, but also eliminates the need to customize a synthesizer for each target molecule.

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Nature 579, 346-348 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00764-4

References

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