Microwave Synthesis in High-Throughput Environments

Mitra Matloobi and C. Oliver Kappe - Article published in Chemistry Today

Abstract
In the past few years, using microwave energy to heat and drive chemical reactions has become increasingly popular in the medicinal and organic chemistry community. First described over 20 years ago, this non-classical heating method has matured from a laboratory curiosity to an established technique that is heavily used in academia and industry.

One of the many advantages of using rapid “microwave flash heating” for chemical synthesis is the dramatic reduction in reaction times: from days and hours to minutes and seconds. While most of the published examples for synthesizing compound libraries using microwave technology till date involve processing in automated sequential fashion, attention now is focusing on parallel processing in microtiter plates. This review highlights the state-of-the-art in this rapidly evolving field.

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