Microreactor Tames Grignard Reagents

摘要

A SCALABLE microreactor developed by researchers in Germany makes Grignard reactions faster and safer while improving product yield and purity.Widely used in pharmaceutical,fragrance and flavoring processes to forge carbon-carbon bonds,Grignard reagents nevertheless pose serious processing challenges.Their reactions often start slowly and then progress rapidly and exothermically.Trying to control the speed and volume of their addition to a reactor helps-but also slows reaction time and allows formation of unwanted byproducts.After five years of work,researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microengineering and Microsystems(IMM)in Mainz,Germany,have overcome these problems with a flow microreactor(Figure 2).It reduces reaction time to minutes while improving product purity and enabling its tailoring to specific requirements,they note.