Abstract

Combining Electrochemical Methodology Development With Flow Technology - The Best of Two Worlds?

Timothy Noël, Professor, University of Amsterdam

Electrochemistry constitutes a mild, green and versatile activation method of organic molecules. Despite these innate advantages, its widespread use in organic chemistry has been hampered due to technical limitations, such as mass and heat transfer limitations which restraints the scalability of electrochemical methods. Most of the limitations associated with organic electrochemistry can be overcome by performing electrochemical reactions in continuous-flow microreactors. Specifically, the confined dimensions of micro-flow reactors (up to 1 mm internal diameter) allows to reduce the Ohmic drop, to minimize the total amount of supporting electrolytes, and to increase mass transfer from the bulk solution to the electrode surface.

In this lecture, we will describe the development of an electrochemical flow reactor which allows not only to accelerate electrochemical transformations but also to scale the chemistry without the need for reoptimization of the reaction conditions. Furthermore, we will exemplify the versatility of this reactor for a variety of different electrochemical methods developed in our group, including selective oxidation of thioethers and the synthesis of sulfonamides and sulfonyl fluorides.