Continuous flow system for simple preparation of functionalized polymeric beads from poly(acrylamide-thiolactone)

Going with the flow: continuous flow devices to fabricate functional spherical polymers based on poly(acrylamide-thiolactone).

Rational Design of Simple Organocatalysts for the HSiCl3 Enantioselective Reduction of (E)-N-(1-Phenylethylidene)aniline

Prolinamides are well-known organocatalysts for the HSiCl3 reduction of imines; however, custom design of catalysts is based on trial-and-error experiments. In this work, we have used a combination of computational calculations and experimental work, including kinetic analyses, to properly understand this process and to design optimized catalysts for the benchmark (E)-N-(1-phenylethylidene)aniline. The best results have been obtained with the amide derived from 4-methoxyaniline and the N-pivaloyl protected proline, for which the catalyzed process is almost 600 times faster than the uncatalyzed one. Mechanistic studies reveal that the formation of the component supramolecular complex catalyst-HSiCl3-substrate, involving hydrogen bonding breaking and costly conformational changes in the prolinamide, is an important step in the overall process.

Synergy between supported ionic liquid-like phases and immobilized palladium N-heterocyclic carbene-phosphine complexes for the Negishi reaction under flow conditions

The combination of supported ionic liquids and immobilized NHC-Pd-RuPhos led to active and more stable systems for the Negishi reaction under continuous flow conditions than those solely based on NHC-Pd-RuPhos. The fine tuning of the NHC-Pd catalyst and the SILLPs is a key factor for the optimization of the release and catch mechanism leading to a catalytic system easily recoverable and reusable for a large number of catalytic cycles enhancing the long-term catalytic performance.

Urea-Based Low-Molecular-Weight Pseudopeptidic Organogelators for the Encapsulation and Slow Release of (R)-Limonene

Low-molecular-weight compounds containing alkylurea fragments attached to the amino end of different miminalistic pseudopeptidic structures have been shown to be excellent organogelators in a variety of organic solvents and liquid organic compounds of different nature. The formation of gels in this work is defined through rheological measurements for those cases where G' > G''. Both the topology and the symmetry of the corresponding urea compounds play a role in defining their organogelator behavior. This can also be tuned by the presence of additional supramolecular guests, as is the case for suberic acid. These compounds also achieve the gelation of relevant active substances such as terpene natural oils and complex mixtures of flavors and fragrances. This provides a simple and mass-efficient supramolecular system for the quantitative encapsulation of active substances, without the need for any additional solvent or complex processes, and their consequent controlled release.

Divergent Multistep Continuous Synthetic Transformations of Allylic Alcohol Enabled by Catalysts Immobilized in Ionic Liquid Phases

Two individual catalytic platforms (metal- and organo-catalyzed) based on the use of an ionic liquid phase were successfully integrated for the synthesis of α-cyano-amine and cyanohydrin trimethylsilyl ethers from allylic alcohol. The right combination of continuous flow processes enabled access to the divergent preparation of two alternative and interesting intermediate compounds from the same starting material.

New porous monolithic membranes based on supported ionic liquid-like phases for oil/water separation and homogenous catalyst immobilisation

Membranes based on supported ionic liquid-like phase (SIILP) systems with tunable properties allowed oil/water separation and reaction/separation integration in biphasic systems.

Poly(acrylamide-homocysteine thiolactone) as a synthetic platform for the preparation of polymeric ionic liquids by post ring-opening-orthogonal modifications

Post-modification of Poly(Acrylamide-Homocysteine Thiolactone) provides a variety of advanced polymeric materials with different morphologies and structural diversity.

From salts to ionic liquids by systematic structural modifications: a rational approach towards the efficient modular synthesis of enantiopure imidazolium salts

This paper reports a simple and robust modular synthetic strategy that leads to a large variety of configurationally and structurally diverse imidazole-based chiral ionic liquids (CILs) by lipase-catalyzed resolution. The intimate microscopic interactions of the supramolecular ionic network of these imidazolium chiral salts at the molecular level are investigated both spectroscopically (NMR, FT-IR-ATR) and theoretically, and a topological analysis of the experimental electron densities obtained by X-ray diffraction of single crystals is performed. Our results support the key role played by the relative configuration of the -OR group on the hydrogen-bonding pattern and its strong influence on the final physical properties of the imidazolium salt. We also obtained a reasonable correlation between the observed melting point and the non-covalent interactions. The spectroscopic data and the topological analysis reflect the key role played by hydrogen bonds between the OH and imidazolium C2H groups in both cation-anion and cation-cation interactions, with the presence of an OH group leading to an additional inter-cation interaction. This interaction significantly affects the properties of stereoisomeric salts. Even more interestingly, we also studied the effect of the chirality by comparing enantiopure CILs with their racemic mixtures and found that, with the exception of trans-Cy6-OH-Im-Bn-Br, the melting points of the racemic mixtures are higher than those of the corresponding enantiomerically pure forms. For stereoisomeric examples, we have successfully explained the differences in melting temperatures in light of the corresponding structural data. Chirality should therefore be taken into account as a highly attractive design vector in the preparation of ILs with specifically desired properties.

Effect of marker cluster design on the accuracy of human movement analysis using stereophotogrammetry

This paper presents a new, simple model to evaluate the instrumental random errors in kinematic analysis of human movements using stereophotogrammetry. By means of equations analogous to that relate linear or angular momentum with linear or angular velocities, a direct measurement of instantaneous motion can be made without previous finite displacement analysis. Single explicit expressions can be obtained to evaluate the influence of instrumental random errors in the accuracy of the kinematic variables. From these expressions, some conclusions about the effect of marker cluster design on the experimental errors are obtained. An experiment has been carried out in order to validate the proposed technique and to assess the experimental errors in linear and angular velocity measurement and its influence in instantaneous helical axis determination.