Understanding organic reactions in water: from hydrophobic encounters to surfactant aggregates

A crucial factor in realising a green chemical process in solution involves the choice of a safe, non-toxic and cheap solvent. Water is the obvious choice. Despite solubility problems, considerable interest has developed recently in organic chemistry in water. This interest also results from the fact that association and chemical reactions often benefit noticeably from the special properties of water, resulting mainly from its small molecular size, its three-dimensional hydrogen-bond network and hydrophobic interactions which are so unique for liquid water. Here we discuss organic reactions and assembly processes in water, largely taken from experiments performed in the authors, laboratories. We show that non-covalent interactions in water can be utilised for fine tuning organic reactions in aqueous media.