| A technology for conducting chemical reactions in flow under microwave irradiation (MACOS(TM)) has been developed in our group. My research focused on advancing this technology with a variety of capillary reactors of different materials and developing and optimizing general reaction conditions for reactions that would benefit from the advantages of MACOS. Solid alumina tubes were found to be good general purpose reactors as they are microwave transparent and heating can be controlled solely by the reagents/solvent or metal coating. These tubes were also resistant to the high temperatures and pressures generated in the system, as were the quartz and silicon carbide tubes. A small library of molecules was synthesized using the azide-alkyne 1,3-dipolar 'click' cycloaddition, using Cu-coated alumina tubes. The Heck-aza-Michael reaction was also employed as a way to synthesize benzofused sultams but the necessary purity of products unfortunately was not achieved. |
