Continuous Synthesis of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Using Organometallic Heterogeneous Catalysis.

We present the development of continuous processes for the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The set-ups include heterogeneous organometallic catalysts (titanocenes and Pd-complexes) that are ideally suited for these continuous processes. For this purpose we developed novel methods for catalyst immobilization including photolithographic techniques that allow a precise molecular control of the location and dispersion of the catalytic sites on the surface of the materials. The application of the heterogeneous catalysts for the synthesis of chiral amines and substituted biphenyls] and the successful implementation in different lab-scale continuous flow systems, showed that the continuous flow setups lead to improved practicability and flexibility of the processes. Thus, these novel reaction systems constitute promising alternatives to existing batch applications.