A new application report from Radleys describes how the Cooled Carousel 12 Reaction Station has enabled the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, to improve the structure of novel chiral ligands used for Palladium catalysed allylic alkylation reactions.
Ferrocenophane ligands are known to be useful catalysts for Pd-catalysed allylic alkylation, giving allylation product in high yields and with good enantioselectivity. To improve the ligand structure and obtain higher enantioselectivities the Comenius research group used the Cooled Carousel Reaction Station to run a series of carefully controlled parallel test reactions.
By running test reactions using different ligands and varying parameters (ligand loading, ligand/metal ratio etc) in parallel the Comenius research group were able to accelerate the reaction optimisation process.
The Cooled Carousel Reaction Station brings all the benefits of low cost parallel synthesis to applications that require sub-ambient temperatures down to -70°C. Based on the patented Carousel design, the Cooled Carousel fits onto a standard stirrer and can simultaneously perform a choice of six or 12 cooled and stirred parallel solution phase or solid supported reagent-based syntheses. A central gas inlet and radial gas distribution system, combined with gas-tight PTFE caps, allow cooled reactions to be carried out under an inert atmosphere.
The Faculty of Natural Sciences at Comenius University is a member of the European Ligand Bank (LigBank) consortium. Funded with the support of the European Community's Sixth Framework Programme the LigBank consortium was set-up to provide a Europe-wide resource for distributing new ligands and information about their catalytic activity between research groups.