Here is a quick link (pdf available) to a recent publication from Giancarlo Cravotto at the University of Turin. Known for enabling technologies for several fields of application including synthesis utilizing ultrasound, microwave and multiple techniques for extraction of bioactive compounds. In this paper, the group utilized a new microwave design to run multiple reactions simultaneously in a single-reaction chamber. Several key things about the design: 1) the single-reaction chamber (SRC) is a high temperature, high pressure reactor (looks a little like a Parr reactor) 2) 2-3 gas valves for the addition or modification of a reaction with a reactive gas 3) mechanical stirrer or a specialized rack system connected to an overhead stirrer to agitate multiple reactions. One of the highlights is that the reaction vessel is the microwave cavity and that multiple reactions are placed in a pool of microwave absorbing liquid where the temperature is monitored. Following pre-pressurization, microwave energy is applied and the chamber is uniformly heated and all reactions are under the same set of temperature and pressure conditions. Here’s the cool part — follow the physical chemistry….if the entire chamber is pressurized, each reaction in the chamber has a virtually closed cap of pressure (hence the pre-pressurization) and allows the capability of doing different reactions in each vessel (now we can heat non-absorbing solvents such as THF, dioxane and hexanes). The result is that there isn’t any crossover from one reaction to the next. Highlights are solvent choice, catalyst loading/choice for Heck, Suzuki and a Click chemistry example……picture below give you an idea to run with.

Enabling technologies - Giancarlo Cravotto

Enabling technologies – Giancarlo Cravotto

SynthWAVE

SynthWAVE