Microwave-assisted organic synthesis single-mode reactors

Stadler, A., Yousefi, B.H., Dallinger, D., Walla, P., VanderEycken, E., Kaval, N. and Kappe, C.O., Scalability of microwave-assisted organic synthesis from single-mode to multimode parallel batch reactors, Org. Process Res. Dev., 2003,7, 707. 

Figure 3 Microwave-assisted organic synthesis, (a) A domestic kitchen microwave with local "hot spots." (b) A single-mode microwave reactor for organic synthesis, (c) Comparison of surface temperature between microwave and conventional heating.

Most examples of microwave-assisted chemistry published to date and presented in this book (see Chapters 6 and 7) were performed on a scale of less than 1 g (typically 1-5 mL reaction volume). This is in part a consequence of the recent availability of single-mode microwave reactors that allow the safe processing of small reaction volumes under sealed-vessel conditions by microwave irradiation (see Chapter 3). While these instruments have been very successful for small-scale organic synthesis, it is clear that for microwave-assisted synthesis to become a fully accepted technology in the future there is a need to develop larger scale MAOS techniques that can ultimately routinely provide products on a multi kg (or even higher) scale. 

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