Combinatorial Methods,Automated Synthesis and High‐Throughput Screening in Polymer Research: Past and Present

Combinatorial techniques, parallel experimentation and high‐throughput methods represent a very promising approach in order to speed up the preparation and investigation of new polymeric materials: a large variety of parameters can be screened simultaneously resulting in new structure/property relationships. The field of polymer research seems to be perfectly suited for parallel and combinatorial methods due to the fact that many parameters can be varied during synthesis, processing, blending as well as compounding. In addition, numerous important parameters have to be investigated, such as molecular weight, polydispersity, viscosity, hardness, stiffness and other application‐specific properties. A number of corresponding high‐throughput techniques have been developed in the last few years and their introduction into the commercial market further boosted the development. These combinatorial approaches can reduce the time‐to‐market for new polymeric materials drastically compared to traditional approaches and allow a much more detailed understanding of polymers from the macroscopic to the nanoscopic scale. Here we provide an overview of the present status of combinatorial and parallel polymer synthesis and high‐throughput screening.

     

Controlled microwave heating in modern organic synthesis

Although fire is now rarely used in synthetic chemistry, it was not until Robert Bunsen invented the burner in 1855 that the energy from this heat source could be applied to a reaction vessel in a focused manner. The Bunsen burner was later superseded by the isomantle, oil bath, or hot plate as a source for applying heat to a chemical reaction. In the past few years, heating and driving chemical reactions by microwave energy has been an increasingly popular theme in the scientific community. This nonclassical heating technique is slowly moving from a laboratory curiosity to an established technique that is heavily used in both academia and industry. The efficiency of "microwave flash heating" in dramatically reducing reaction times (from days and hours to minutes and seconds) is just one of the many advantages. This Review highlights recent applications of controlled microwave heating in modern organic synthesis, and discusses some of the underlying phenomena and issues involved.     

DNA-templated organic synthesis: nature's strategy for controlling chemical reactivity applied to synthetic molecules

In contrast to the approach commonly taken by chemists, nature controls chemical reactivity by modulating the effective molarity of highly dilute reactants through macromolecule-templated synthesis. Nature's approach enables complex mixtures in a single solution to react with efficiencies and selectivities that cannot be achieved in conventional laboratory synthesis. DNA-templated organic synthesis (DTS) is emerging as a surprisingly general way to control the reactivity of synthetic molecules by using nature's effective-molarity-based approach. Recent developments have expanded the scope and capabilities of DTS from its origins as a model of prebiotic nucleic acid replication to its current ability to translate DNA sequences into complex small-molecule and polymer products of multistep organic synthesis. An understanding of fundamental principles underlying DTS has played an important role in these developments. Early applications of DTS include nucleic acid sensing, small-molecule discovery, and reaction discovery with the help of translation, selection, and amplification methods previously available only to biological molecules.     

固相有机合成研究进展

组合化学技术给固相有机合成带来了新的发展契机,同时也提出了新的发展要求。目前这一研究领域发展迅速,应用范围不断扩大,技术日臻完善。本文综述了近期固相有机合成研究方面的最新进展。     

Continuous synthesis and purification by direct coupling of a flow reactor with simulated moving-bed chromatography

Continuous synthesis meets continuous purification to produce pure products from crude reaction mixtures. In the nucleophilic aromatic substitution of 2,4-difluoronitrobenzene with morpholine the desired monosubstituted product can be continuously separated from the byproducts in a purity of over 99 % by coupling a flow reactor to a simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography module.     

Instrumentation for Combinatorial and High‐Throughput Polymer Research: A Short Overview

Starting in biochemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry, combinatorial methods, automated synthesis and high‐throughput characterization are being further developed for organic synthesis and polymer research. The development is strongly driven by the achievements in biochemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry and the need to minimize the time‐to‐market for novel polymeric products. The success of high‐throughput methodologies in polymer science is partially limited by the commercially available hardware (synthesizers, workstations, robots, online‐characterization instruments, etc.) and software. A short overview of commercially available equipment for polymer research is provided in this Review.

     

Ketenes in polymer-assisted synthesis

Since its inception, ketene chemistry has developed into a unique and well-established source of useful transformations for conventional synthetic organic chemistry. It is, therefore, not surprising that soon after their movement from the realm of peptide and peptoid libraries to that of small molecules, combinatorial chemists have sought the benefits of ketene chemistry to satisfy their own synthetic needs. The ability of these versatile molecules to undergo reactions with nucleophiles, and to participate in cycloadditions and cyclocondensations, has been utilized for the preparation of diverse heterocyclic compounds, and has added to the advantages of polymer-assisted synthesis for rapid purification. Different types of ketenes and different methods for their generation have been involved, which illustrates the potential diversity of the chemistry. There is now a better grasp of the effect of the fragility of these sometimes transient molecules on the reactions involving solid supports, and this augurs well for the application of some of the more recent developments in ketene chemistry to the generation of small-molecule libraries.     

Continuous flow synthesis of porous materials

Porous materials play an important role in chemical catalysis,separation and other industrial applications.High-efficiency preparation of porous materials has become an active research area.Conventional synthesis of porous materials has been dominated by one-pot solution processing conditions carried out by bulk mixing under conventional electric heating via hydrothermal,solvothermal or ionothermal reactions where high temperatures and pressures are the standard.Continuous flow synthesis has many key advantages in terms of efficient mass and heat transfer,precise control of residence times,improved opportunities for automation and feedback control of synthesis,scaling-up reactions and improved safety parameters compared to above mentioned conventional batch scale synthetic methods.In this review,continuous flow synthesis of various crystalline porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks(MOFs),covalent-organic frameworks(COFs),porous organic cages and zeolites is discussed.Combination of microfluidic methods with other techniques are also shown including various heating ways and various methods of substrate adding.     

Platform synthesis: A useful strategy for rapid and systematic generation of molecular diversity

Emergence of library-based approaches have changed the way of developing new functional molecules in materials science and pharmaceutical science. Therefore, reliable methods for rapid and systematic generation of functional molecules are highly called for in this field. We herein describe our concept of "platform synthesis" as a useful strategy for generating molecular diversity. This simple yet powerful strategy realizes the synthesis of a number of interesting multifunctional molecules, such as multisubstituted olefins, in a programmable and diversity-oriented format. As well as applications to the synthesis of pharmaceutically important molecules, such as tamoxifen and CDP840, applications to materials science, which have led to the discovery of interesting fluorescent materials and properties, are also described.     

The combined use of microwaves and ultrasound: improved tools in process chemistry and organic synthesis

Microwave heating and ultrasonic waves are among the most simple, inexpensive, and valuable tools in applied chemistry. Besides saving energy, these green techniques promote faster and more selective transformations. Could they be combined to enhance their effects still further? As they are of a basically different nature (quantum and non‐quantum fields), each must be fine‐tuned by its specific parameters; a combined device will often be subject to additional hazard limitations. However, recent developments evidence that such a combination is certainly possible and safe, ranging from simple modifications to flow systems that are well suited for automation and scaling‐up. By using selected examples, this concept article gives an overview of apparatus currently available for simultaneous or tandem irradiation and explains how it can be utilized in organic synthesis and analysis.     

Development of the traceless phenylhydrazide linker for solid-phase synthesis

The hydrazide group is a new oxidatively cleavable traceless linker for solid-phase chemistry. It can be readily introduced by hydrazide formation between a carboxy-functionalized resin and different substituted hydrazines. In order to achieve high yields in this step, new carboxylic acid resins were developed that are not prone to undesired imide formation upon activation of the carboxylic acid. The polymer-bound acyl hydrazides were successfully employed in various transformations, namely Heck, Suzuki, Sonogashira, and Stille couplings, as well as Wittig and Grignard reactions. Traceless release of the coupling products from the solid support is achieved selectively under mild conditions and in high purity by oxidation of the aryl hydrazides to acyl diazenes with Cu(II) salts or N-bromosuccinimide (NBS) and subsequent nucleophilic attack of the acyl diazene intermediates. Traceless cleavage by oxidation with NBS can be carried out as a two-step process in which stable acyl diazenes are first generated by treatment with NBS in the absence of a nucleophile. After removal of the reagents by simple resin washing, the traceless release is effected by the addition of methanol, which leads to products of high purity without any additional separation steps.     

Combinatorial library of low molecular-weight organo- and hydrogelators based on glycosylated amino acid derivatives by solid-phase synthesis

A combinatorial approach for the synthesis of supramolecular gelators as new organic materials is described herein. In the course of the development of a convenient and flexible solid-phase synthesis of the artificial glycolipids, some of these compounds were accidentally found to act as low molecular-weight gelators toward organic solvents. Using this combinatorial solid-phase synthesis of glycosylated amino acetates, screening and optimization of low molecular-weight organo/hydro-gelators were efficiently carried out. We found that an N-acetyl-galactosamine-appended amino acid ester (GalNAc-aa) efficiently gelates a broad spectrum of organic solvents. More interestingly, some GalNAc-aa derivatives displayed an excellent hydrogelation capability. Transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, and FT-IR were used for characterization of the gel structure. It is indicated that supramolecular fibers supported by strong hydrogen-bonding networks are entangled so that the resulting spaces can immobilize a number of solvent molecules effectively. In addition, the supramolecular hydrogel consisting of GalNAc-suc-glu(O-methyl-cyc-pentyl)(2) is stable even under high salt concentrations probably due to its nonionic character and as a result, a native protein is successfully entrapped in the gel matrix without denaturation.     

A microcapillary system for simultaneous, parallel microwave-assisted synthesis

A continuous flow, microwave-assisted, parallel-capillary microreactor has been developed. Libraries of drug candidates were prepared on the milligram scale with this reactor by injecting plugs of reagents from separate syringes into common reaction capillaries, thereby producing discrete compounds in excellent yield and purity. Microwave irradiation provides the necessary energy that existing room-temperature microreactor technology lacks for higher activation barrier transformations, producing the required amounts of desired compounds in minutes or less.