Alternating Current Electrolysis for Organic Synthesis

PROJECT SUMMARY With growing concerns regarding the environment and sustainability, there is an increasing demand for integrating green chemistry and green engineering into the pharmaceutical industry.

Electrochemical organic synthesis represents a green and advantageous alternative to traditional synthetic methods because it directly uses electrons from a power source to complete the redox transformations, which can cut down on the usage of chemicals, reduce waste, and offer improvements in cost, safety, and sustainability.

However, the current reaction library of electrosynthetic methods is limited. Therefore, there is a critical need for new electrolytic methods that offer new chemical reactivities. The proposal is focused on studying the mostly unexplored alternating current electrolysis for organic synthesis.

Unlike the conventional electroorganic synthetic methods using a constant voltage or current, alternating current electrolysis uses an alternating voltage to drive the redox transformations of substrates.

Alternating current electrolysis offers a unique reaction environment where two redox-opposite reactions can occur spatially and temporally close to each other and can be easily adjustable by merely controlling the alternating current voltage supply.

The overall goal of this proposal is to exploit this unique reaction environment of alternating current electrolysis to achieve new reactivities that are not currently accessible by the existing synthetic methodologies, serving as a critical step towards the long-term vision of the electrically driven green synthesis of drugs.