Solid phase reaction monitoring

FT-IR microspectroscopy is a new nondestructive, fast and rehable technique for solid-phase reaction monitoring. It is the most powerful of the currently available IR methods as it usually requires only a single bead for analysis, thus it is referred to as single bead FT-IR [166]. (See also Chapter 12 for further details). The high sensitivity of the FT-IR microscope is achieved thanks to the use of an expensive liquid nitrogen-cooled mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) detector. Despite the high cost of the instrument, this technique should become more widely used in the future as it represents the most convenient real-time reaction monitoring tool in SPOS [166, 167]. 

KBr pellet or single bead samples are suitable for the purpose of solid-phase reaction monitoring and the study of reaction kinetics. For the KBr-embedded samples, a higher amount of resin material and longer sample preparation time is required, but these are compensated by the low costs for the measurement with KBr-pellets. The compromise here is the use of an ATR-instrumentation. With this technique the throughput of samples is much higher at low costs for additional equipment. ATR-IR spectra quality is at the same level than for the common methods mentioned before. 

In addition, a novel fluorous support has been developed recently as an alternative to traditional polymer supports and applied successfully to oligosaccharide synthesis in combination with the trichloroacetimidate method [541]. Each intermediate in the fluorous oligosaccharide synthesis [542,543] could be obtained by simple fluorous-organic solvent extraction, and the reactions could be monitored by TLC, NMR and MS, in contrast to solid-phase reactions. Moreover, the new liquid-phase technique is anticipated to be easily applicable to the large-scale synthesis. 

Another traditional method used for polymer support characterization is elemental analysis. Its use as an accurate quantitative technique for monitoring solid-phase reactions has also been demonstrated [146]. Microanalysis can be extremely valuable if a solid-phase reaction results in the loss or introduction of a heteroatom (usually N, S, P or halogen). In addition, this method can be used for determination of the loading level of a functional group (e. g. usually calculated directly from the observed microanalytical data). For example, in many cases, the displacement of chloride from Merrifield resin has been used as a guide to determine the yield of the solid-phase reaction. 

Infrared and Raman spectroscopy are nondestructive, quick and convenient techniques for monitoring the course of solid-phase reactions, and have therefore been widely used for the characterization of polymer supports and supported species [156-160]. In fact, the application of infrared spectroscopy in solid-phase synthesis has received much attention and has been the subject of several recent reviews [127, 128, 161-164]. Reactions involving either the appearance or disappearance of an IR-active functional group can be easily monitored using any of the IR techniques described in this section. Some beads are typically removed from the reaction mixture, then they are quickly washed and dried prior to IR analysis. Traditionally, polymer supports are diluted and ground with KBr, then conventional FT-IR analysis of the KBr disk is carried out Although this is a commonly used... 

In situ IR spectral monitoring of solid-phase reactions carried out in dichloro-methane, using a flow-through cell [170, 171] has also been described. 

Chan, T. Y. Chen, R. Sofia, M. J. Smith, B. C. Glennon, D. High Throughput On-Bead Monitoring of Solid Phase Reactions by Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (DRIFTS), Tetrahedron Lett. 1997, 38, 2821. 

Because the characterization of support-bound intermediates is difficult (see below), solid-phase reactions are most conveniently monitored by cleaving the intermediates from the support and analyzing them in solution. Depending on the loading, 5-20 mg of support will usually deliver sufficient material for analysis by HPLC, LC-MS, and NMR, and enable assessment of the outcome of a reaction. Analytical tools that are particularly well suited for the rapid analysis of small samples resulting from solid-phase synthesis include MALDI-TOF MS [3-5], ion-spray MS [6-8], and tandem MS [9]. MALDI-TOF MS can even be used to analyze the product cleaved from a single bead [5], and is therefore well suited to the identification of products synthesized by the mix-and-split method (Section 1.2). The analysis and quantification of small amounts of product can be further facilitated by using supports with two linkers, which enable either release of the desired product or release of the product covalently bound to a dye [10-13], to an isotopic label [11], or to a sensitizer for mass spectrometry [6,14,15] (e.g., product-linker-dye- analytical linker -Pol). 

An evaluation of a potential solid support begins by first determining which method or methods will be used to monitor what is attached on the particular support. Certain types of supports are not compatible with all of the available methods of analysis or, at least, not as easy to evaluate as others. Table 1 lists the major techniques available to monitor solid-phase reactions. Measuring the absorbance of a UV-active group cleaved off a support and elemental analysis of the support itself are both methods... 

Yan B, Kumaravel HA, Wu A, Petter RC, Jewell C, Wareing J, Infrared spectrum of a single resin bead for real time monitoring of solid phase reactions, J. Org. Chem., 60 5736-5738, 1995. 

SAXSAVAXS/RAMAN is especially useful when dealing with chemically induced phase transitions. The example shown in Figure 2(e) is the polymerisation of solvent styrene into polystyrene in which polyethylene is in solution. Polyethylene is soluble in styrene but insoluble in polystyrene. RAMAN allows the determination of the reaction kinetics of polystyrene formation and monitors the crystallisation of the polyethylene. The SAXS monitors the liquid-liquid phase separation followed by the liquid-solid phase transition, whilst the WAXS also observes the liquid solid phase by monitoring the appearance of peaks due to the crystallisation of polyethylene. These are very valuable parameters when trying to define any new manufacturing process. ... 

The most common methods for monitoring solid phase reactions utilized in normal research laboratories are Infrared analysis of resin... 

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