Comparison of monomode and multimode microwave equipment in Suzuki–Miyaura reactions—en route to high throughput parallel synthesis under microwave conditions

Abstract The microwave heated Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling reaction of boronic acids, boronic esters and organotrifluoroborates served as a model reaction in a singlemode equipment. The reaction conditions were optimized with respect to temperature and reaction time and were transferred to multimode equipment which is well suited for multiparallel synthesis in a larger scale. The source of the Pd species chosen included immobilized Pd complexes and Pd particles. In fact the increased time to reach the required reaction time in multimode chambers suitable for 48 parallel reactions has to be taken into account. The nature of the boronic acid has no impact on the efficiency of the catalytic process. However, heterogenized Pd species perform less well in multimode chambers with larger vial volumes, which we ascribe to diffusion phenomena.