The practice of synthetic organic chemistry is the practice of diminishing returns. Synthetic organic reactions require reactants to collide with sufficient energy and in the correct orientation. Only then will the reactants possess the necessary requirements to overcome the reaction’s activation energy and produce the desired product. Surprisingly, organic chemists will use the term ‘optimize’ to describe the process wherein the reaction time, temperature, pressure, concentration are varied to achieve ‘optimal’ conditions for reactivity. Typically, these optimized conditions are far from optimized and reactions require significant time produce the desired product in non-quantitative yields – less than 100 percent. It’s hard to believe a reaction is optimized when it takes 48 hours to complete and only yields 65% of the desired product. Nano-reactors provide the opportunity to drastically reduce reaction times to mere minutes while increasing reaction yields to 100%. Nano-reactors facilitate organic reactions when the nano-reactors absorb the reactants and solvent into central cavities. To accommodate the molecules, the nano-reactor swells 3-5 times its dry volume. The solvent is then removed, which collapses the nano-reactor, forcing the reactants to collide in a nano-sized cavity. The authors will report the development of nano-reactors to facilitate amide bond coupling and its application and versatility when applied to peptide synthesis.

Exploration of amide bond coupling in nano-reactors

2019 Spring National Meeting

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