In today's world of instant coffee, instant meals, and instant messaging, undergraduate students prefer not to have to wait 30-60 minutes for an organic reaction to take place. Heating with microwaves is rapidly becoming more commonplace due to dramatically reduced reaction times and higher product yields. Students appreciate the short reaction times and like working with advanced technology that is seen with the commercial microwave reactors available. Furthermore, undergraduate organic students like being able to relate an experiment to something that they see every day. For these reasons, the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, extracting caffeine from tea, and isolating trans-cinnamaldehyde from cinnamon sticks are popular experiments. One such experiment is the synthesis of the artificial sweetener dulcin (4-ethoxyphenylurea), which can be prepared from the reaction of p-phenetidine and urea. Artificial sweetening agents are extremely important to the food industry because of the national concern with diet and weight control. The synthesis of this particular sweetener typically takes 30 minutes to reach completion. However, using microwave irradiation, the reaction reached completion in 5 minutes using a temperature of 120�C. This procedure was implemented into the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory curriculum where students successfully prepared dulcin in yields ranging from 10-85% with an average yield of 35%.

Preparation of dulcin (4-ethoxyphenylurea) using microwave irradiation

247th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.