Continuous Flow Process: A New Paradigm in Materials Syntheses
Anil Kumar, Professor, IIT Bombay
Continuous flow process provides a potential
alternative to batch synthesis because of its inherent advantages such as very
efficient heat exchange, high batch to batch reproducibility, fast mixing, high
throughput, safety, and the ability to do multistep telescoping synthesis. Due to these advantages, these processes have
been referred to as the most promising “Green Technology”. In fact,
continuous flow processes are projected to be the “CHEMICAL FACTORIES” of
tomorrow. Continuous flow processes also provide an “On-Demand” synthesis with
complete control over reproducibility, size, shape and these parameters can be
achieved at various scales (lab synthesis to pilot to bulk production) with
excellent reproducibility. This opens up the opportunity for synthetic chemists
to prepare materials with precise control over critical molecular design
parameters. It also enables one to carry out material synthesis at higher
temperatures that were outside the domain of an organic synthetic lab. We have
been exploring continuous flow processes for the synthesis of conjugated
polymers, nanoparticles and nanofibers, catalysis for heterogeneous processes
etc. In this presentation, I will review some of the recent advances in these
directions and some results from our laboratory.
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