RIDING THE MICROWAVE

Abstract

KABOOM! EXPLOSIONS ARE RARELY reassuring sounds. It is, however, the loud truth that the development of equipment for microwave-assisted organic synthesis has been propelled by pioneering chemists who have exploded, and occasionally continue to explode, reaction vials or who have blown the doors off the domestic microwave ovens on their benchtops. For example, in one of the first papers on the subject of microwave synthesis [ Tetrahedron Lett. , 27 , 279 (1986)], chemist Richard Gedye and his colleagues at Laurentian University documented a violent explosion. Michael J. Collins, chief executive officer of microwave equipment manufacturer CEM Corp., says that in the early days, those mishaps happened in his development labs, too. That is how you learn, he says. Nicholas Leadbeater, an organic chemist at the University of Connecticut who does much microwave chemistry, makes no secret of such experiences in his lab. To explore microwave-assisted syntheses in the 1980s and a good ...