A simple, room temperature approach for the fast single-step synthesis of α-phosphonyloxy ketone, a drug scaffold, has been developed which involves highly reactive species i.e., 1,2-dicarbonyls that readily react with trialkyl phosphites and formic acids in batch as well as in continuous-flow with the flow rate of 3 ml/min (t R = ∼4 s). The present approach reduced the synthesis time from hours to minutes in batch, which was further lowered to a few seconds precisely controlled by single capillary microfluidics. A wide range of 1,2-dicarbonyl deriva-Continuous-flow microreactors have recently attracted much attention as an important technique for synthesizing organic molecules including drug intermediates/molecules in a very short time under mild reaction conditions. [1][2][3][4] A high surface area to volume ratio in this microfluidic system promotes mass and heat transfer, leading to selectivity and conversion much superior to the levels obtainable by conventional batch processes. [2][3][4] Owing to their many complex issues such as inefficient mixing, non-uniformity in heat, and safety in the scale-up of batch process, in recently, flow approach is more attractive and reliable in both academia and industry. [1,2] Furthermore, high throughput production can be achieved by simply increasing reaction volume with larger dimension of channel, or/and by numbering up microreactor units in parallel. [5,6] In light of the push for continuous manufacturing of pharmaceutical products [7,8] microreactor can be an attractive alternative to the conventional batch process for many of the pharmaceutical products whose world-wide consumption is of the order of tons a year. Therefore, simple and fast continuous-flow methodologies are highly desirable to operate at high flow rate, enabling to satisfy the changing needs of pharmaceutical markets in a safe and environmentally benign, cost-effective manner.On the other hand, the organophosphate chemistry by itself is an interesting area of organic chemistry as well as life science in living organism such as DNA, RNA, ATP and cell membranes. [9] Moreover, various methodologies also reported for [a] Dr.
7730Scheme 4. Control experiments in batch to understand the reaction mechanism.Scheme 5. Plausible reaction mechanism for the synthesis of α-phosponyloxy ketone.