Greener Organic Synthesis

Abstract

When Bruce H. Lipshutz said he had a goal to help the synthetic organic chemistry community get organic solvents out of organic reactions, he wasn’t kidding. The University of California, Santa Barbara, chemistry professor had been quizzing process chemists in industry about the most common reactions they use and what they would like to do to improve the cost and environmental profiles of the processes—that is, how to make them greener and more sustainable. One of the biggest obstacles, they said, was organic solvents. That bit of information led Lipshutz and his research group to develop a class of low-cost designer surfactants. These amphiphilic molecules form nanomicelles, which act as reaction compartments. They enable common transition-metal-catalyzed organic reactions to run in water at production scale at room temperature. For his efforts, Lipshutz received a Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award in 2011. Lipshutz has now moved on to the next phase ...