Heck reaction in ionic liquid accelerated by microwave irradiation / Siti Nur Umi Aminah Zainal Bahri

Heck reaction has gained recognition as one of the most common procedure for C-C bond formation between alkenes and organic halides. However, there are two main drawbacks of the conventional Heck reaction; the reaction time is too long and the expensive catalyst (i.e. palladium) cannot be recovered. This research aims at investigating the effectiveness of ionic liquid and microwave irradiation to overcome these problems. 4-iodoanisole and 4-iodophenylbenyl ether are used as the starting materials, coupled with 3,4-dimethoxystyrene to produce 3,4, 12-trimethoxystyrene. Five different conditions were set up to study the effects of both ionic liquid and microwave heating. As the result, when using only ionic liquid, modest and satisfactory yield was obtained in as low as 9 hours. While combining both ionic liquid and microwave irradiation, the reaction can be accomplished in 1 hour and 40 minutes.