Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

This proposal is to acquire a liquid handling station that can be customized to produce a functionally unique platform to facilitate in-line, real-time analysis of a continuously flowing product stream from a synthetic flow reactor. Manufacturing in general is moving toward ""just-in-time"" practices to avoid the build up and maintenance of significant inventories, which unfortunately is the way that synthetic chemistry is currently conducted. Just-in-time chemical synthesis is viewed as a sustainable way to move forward that will drastically reduce the scale on which synthetic chemistry is conducted. This will in turn significantly improve safety while dramatically reducing the environmental impact associated with chemical processes. The PI's research group has developed energy efficient and effective flow chemistry technology that uses microwave irradiation to heat flowed reactions. In this way, a new reaction can be optimized quickly because only a single drop of the effluent needs to be assessed in order to confirm for the operator if the reaction has been successful or not. Unlike conventional synthesis conducted in stationary, batch-style reactors, once suitable conditions have been reached, the reaction only needs to be flowed longer and/or in parallel flow reactors to produce the desired quantity of chemical matter. This will eliminate the wasteful and time-intensive exercise of on-going reaction process development. The missing link for flow chemistry to cement its hold in industry is connecting the processes of synthesis and analysis, which presents the opportunity to make the overall operation programmable (i.e., hands-off). This will allow scientists to devote more time to discovering new materials while the new automated flow equipment works away at preparing provides chemical products around the clock at a safe scale. The new robotic liquid handling system will fill this gap between synthesis and analysis, thus closing the loop on continuous process optimization. This will have a tremendous impact on the penetration of flow technology and all of its benefits into discovery and manufacturing in the chemical sector.