Organic Synthesis using Electrochemical Flow Reactors: Towards Sustainable Synthesis of High Value Chemicals

Electrochemistry can provide enable cleaner and more sustainable organic syntheses by replacing conventional stoichiometric reagents, which may be toxic, hazardous and expensive, with electron transfer driven by the passage of electrical current. Our group has pioneered the development of extended path-length flow cells for laboratory electrosynthesis and demonstrated their application in a number of synthetic transformations including oxidative C-H functionalisations, alcohol oxidation, selected C-C bond formations and oxidative esterification and amidation processes.
The project involves the development and discovery of new electrochemically-mediated synthetic methods, with particular emphasis on reactions of interest in the synthesis of complex molecules including pharmaceutical intermediates and natural products. Reactions of interest include functional group transformations and carbon-carbon bond formation. The latter will be of particular interest in the synthesis of complex molecules. The project is associated with our Programme grant Photo-Electro, will academic and industrial collaborators.