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Concept · chemistry

Organic synthesis

7 studies1 discovery

Organic synthesis is the planned construction of carbon frameworks by forming and breaking bonds, usually judged by yield, selectivity and characterisation of isolated products.

Undergraduates live in this course: the reaction on the page is only as real as the molecule you can isolate.

Studies

7

Findings

5

7 supporting · 0 challenging · 0 qualifying citations

Open tensions

1

Currently

What we know

  1. This library holds 7 empirical chemistry papers on organic synthesis with isolated findings, rates or spectra rather than reviews.
  2. A bulky aryl-PPCl diphosphene is isolated as a monomer, swapped to Br and I, and shown to have a P=P double bond unlike diazonium chlorides.
  3. Meta-linked squaramide macrocycles bind SO42− so tightly in wet DMSO that NMR cannot measure Ka, and they still select sulfate in 50% water.
  4. Ethyl arylazocarboxylates plus iron phthalocyanine and air replace stoichiometric DEAD in Mitsunobu esterifications with high inversion.
  5. PhC(O)SH plus Ir(ppy)3 switches photoredox arylation from N-methyl C–H to the benzylic position, giving 1,1-diarylmethylamines in hours.

Largest unresolved question

A high yield on one substrate is not a general method, and many 'new reactions' are still one-pot screens rather than mechanism-complete syntheses.

Common misconceptions

  • New reactions always work on every substrate.

    Scope, yield and characterisation are empirical and often narrow.

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