Tropfenbasierte Multiphasen – Mikroreaktionstechnologie in organisch-chemischer Synthese

In der vorliegenden Doktorarbeit werden neue, mikrofluidische Verfahren, zur Durchführung chemischer Reaktionen in mehrphasigen Systemen präsentiert. rnDas Einschließen von Reaktionspartnern in einzelne Segmente, deren Volumina im Bereich von Mikro- bis Femtoliter liegen und die dadurch erzeugten enormen, spezifischen Oberflächen, ermöglichen Massentransportprozesse über die Phasengrenzfläche zwischen einzelnen Segmenten, drastisch zu intensivieren. Aufgrund geringer räumlicher Ausdehnungen einzelner Kompartimente und durch vorherrschende, zirkulierende Strömungen in den einzelnen Abschnitten, sind Diffusions- und Konvektionsprozesse in diesen rasch, sodass an der Grenzfläche gebildete, reaktive Intermediate in sehr kurzen Zeitintervallen umgesetzt werden können. rnrnThis doctoral dissertation presents novel microfluidic processes for conducting chemical reactions in multi-phase systems. A high performance was achieved by creating encapsulated biphasic fluid compartments whose volumes range from micro- to femtoliters, which drastically increased the surface-to-volume ratio and thereforce enhanced the mass transfer over the phase boundaries. Due to the small spatial dimensions of single segments, a circulating current was predominant and diffusion processes, as well as convection processes, occured rapidly. Instable and highly reactive intermediates which formed at the phase boundary between two segments could therefore be handled in very short time periods

Palladium-catalyzed carbon-carbon cross-coupling reactions in thermomorphous double emulsions

The method of combining the concept of fluorous biphasic catalysis (FCB) with micro multiple emulsions benefits from the advantages of homogeneous as well as from heterogeneous catalysis in continuous micro flow. In this particular case, three immiscible fluid phases in continuous micro segmented flow were used to perform palladium-catalyzed Heck cross-coupling reactions of styrene with aryl halides. A capillary tube-in-tube coaxial flow setup in combination with a glass micro reactor was used to produce monodisperse aqueous phase/organic phase/perfluorinated phase double emulsions. The resulting emulsions had a core–shell droplet structure composed of a perfluorcarbon fluid in which a palladium catalyst with fluorinated phosphine ligands was dissolved, an organic phase consisting of a solvent and two reagents, and an alkaline aqueous solution. The fluorous and organic phases of the double emulsion form a thermomorphous system which can be converted into one phase by an increase of temperature above 150 °C, and the catalytic reaction is performed temporarily. By decreasing the temperature, a phase separation takes place; after that, the organic phase contains the product and the catalyst is located in the fluorous phase. The separated catalyst solution was reused several times without a noticeable loss of activity. The main advantage of this method is to use temporarily very high catalyst concentrations in each droplet, while employing only small amounts of the catalyst for the overall reaction volume