The synthesis of a number of analagous compounds for the purposes of testing is often refered to as library synthesis or highthroughput chemistry. The automated AFRICA system is designed for fast, serial library synthesis and is capable of synthesising and purifying 10s - 100s of compounds a day.
The heart of AFRICA is a microfluidic reactor through which reactions are flowed.
With reaction times cut to 2 minutes within the micro reactor due to super heating (pseudo-microwave effect), 10s – 100 of compounds can be synthesised and purified a day – with tailored reaction conditions for each synthesis. A liquid handling robot can access a deck of hundreds of compounds which are injected into the flow stream. The Flow Liquid-Liquid EXtraction module can perform in-line aqueous work-up before the product is automatically collected by a robot at the output.
The automated AFRICA system is currently being used by a number of major pharmaceutical companies for this application.
