Quick production of organic compounds is important in pharmaceutical, biochemical, and materials science. The copper-catalyzed Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of organic azides and terminal alkynes is an important click reaction for such processes.

Yasuhiro Uozumi, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Wako, Japan, and colleagues have developed a microflow reactor system with an insoluble membranous catalyst installed at the interface of two laminar flows. One advantage of microflow systems is that the efficiency of various catalytic reactions has been found to increase due to the vast interfacial area and the short distance of the molecular diffusion path within the narrow space of the reactor.

When applied to the Huisgen cycloaddition, the team found that the corresponding triazole products were obtained in quantitative yield within 8–38 seconds. This result has important implications for the high-throughput screening of pharmaceutical and biochemical compounds and new materials.

• Instantaneous Click Chemistry by a Copper-Containing Polymeric Membrane-Installed Microflow Catalytic Reactor,
  Yoichi M. A. Yamada, Aya Ohno, Takuma Sato, Yasuhiro Uozumi,
  Chem. Eur. J. 2015.
  DOI: 10.1002/chem.201503178