Microreaction Technology for Synthetic Chemistry

Microreaction technology as an emerging tool for synthetic chemistry has been extensively applied in academic and industrial researches. Normally, synthetic chemists used to running reactions in the classical glassware for centuries are unfamiliar and unaccustomed to use microreaction technology for routine synthetic work. This review tries to give a general introduction of the capabilities of microreaction technology. After introducing the origin and history of microreaction technology, we review and discuss mainly several synthetic examples of high T-P reactions, hazardous reactions, flash chemistry, polymerization, photochemistry, electrochemistry and multistep API's syntheses to demonstrate the capabilities of microreactors. A summary and perspectives on microreactor technology are also given in this paper. It is anticipated that more and more chemists will understand the capabilities and limitations of microreaction technology, and could work together with chemical engineers for the synergic development of chemistry and chemical engineering.