(203h) Design of Efficient Metal Nanocatalysts for Continuous Synthesis of Drug Substances Via Cross Coupling Reactions

Andishaeh Dadgar, Farshid Mohammadparast, Marimuthu Andiappan, School of Chemical Engineering, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA.

Cross coupling reactions are widely used reactions in pharmaceutical industry. Heterogeneous metal nanocatalysts can be used as a platform to switch cross-couplings from traditionally-used batch mode to continuous flow mode. As the use of metal nanocatalysts in cross coupling reactions continues to grow, there is becoming a greater need for fast and efficient characterization methods. There is a group of metal nanocatalyst that exhibit a phenomena called surface plasmon resonance (SPR). SPR is a unique trait to each catalyst based on composition, size, and shape of the particles. SPR then shows up in the UV-Vis region of light easily measureable using UV-Vis spectroscopy. This gives a powerful tool to use in characterizing plasmonic metal nanocatalyst.

In this contribution, we show that surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectroscopy can be used as platform to characterize nanometal catalyst quickly and efficiently. Using finite-difference time-domain optical simulations, we show the use of UV-Vis extinction spectrums to monitor nanoparticle geometry to predict the spectroscopic pattern we will see in experiments. We demonstrate that for a variety of nanocatalysts there is a measurable SPR peak shift and/or change in SPR intensity in the UV-Vis extinction spectrum that can be observed and predicted when the catalyst change size or leach. This novel and simple UV-Vis surface plasmon spectroscopic technique will help to (a) fundamentally understand the catalytic pathway and (b) develop efficient catalysts for a variety of reaction sets.