Advancement in Organic Synthesis through High Throughput Experimentation

Exploration of synthetic transformations using high throughput experimentation (HTE) can accelerate the rapid discovery of optimal conditions for organic reactions and improve our understanding of those processes and synthetic route for different applications. The surge in high throughput techniques has been applied to a broad range of methods and target-oriented reaction optimizations across a diverse array of bond-constructions. In this Minireview, we describe HTE based workflows, discuss different transformations that have been evaluated using HTE platforms with a focus on homogeneous catalytic reactions, and highlight challenges reported in the field since 2016. The HTE efforts are grouped by the type of bonds being formed, for instance, carbon-carbon (C-C), carbon-nitrogen (C-N), carbon-halogen or carbon-oxygen (C-X) bonds, as well as photochemical transformations and hydrogenations. The potential of HTE to rapidly guide the optimization of multiple synthetic challenges makes it a very attractive and powerful tool for synthetic organic chemists.