Efficient combination of task-specific ionic liquid and microwave dielectric heating applied to one-pot three component synthesis of a small library of 4-thiazolidinones

The first report of the use of task-specific ionic liquid as synthetic equivalent of ionic liquid-phase matrice for the preparation of a small library of 4-thiazolidinones is reported in this paper. The starting (ethyleneglycol)ionic liquid-phase is functionalized in good yields with 4-(formylphenoxy)butyric acid by using usual esterification reaction conditions (DCC/DMAP as catalyst). The synthesis of the ionic liquid-phase bound 4-thiazolidinones was performed by a one-pot three-component condensation under microwave dielectric heating. The final cleavage under microwave/catalysis strategy provides the expected 4-thiazolidinones in high purity after flash-chromatography purification. According to the ionic liquid-phase organic synthesis (IoLiPOS) methodology, it was found that optimized reaction conditions were per-formed by standard analytical methods (NMR, TLC). The H-1, C-13 NMR spectrum of some representative 4-thiazolidinones and ionic liquid-phase bound benzaldehyde are also reported. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.