One of Prof. Pericàs research group’s latest paper, published in Organic Letters, gets a highlight in Chemistry Views, the ChemPubSocEurope magazine.

The paper entitled ‘Continuous Flow, Highly Enantioselective Michael Additions Catalyzed by a PS-Supported Squaramide’ deals with the development of a continuous flow system for the sequential preparation of a library of enantiopure adducts.

They use a polystyrene supported organocatalyst, based on a bifunctional squaramide, for the Michael addition reaction of 2-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinone with a series of nitroalkenes. The flow catalytic system requires very low catalysts loadings, the catalyst can be recycled up to ten times, and affords very high enantioselectivities.

This new synthetic strategy can yield small focused libraries of enantiopure compounds very rapidly, and therefore, has many potential applications in medicinal chemistry or materials science.