Multistep synthesis

Chemical synthesis is the purposeful execution of one or more named reactions to obtain a product, or several products. In modern laboratory usage, this tends to imply that the process is reproducible, reliable, and established to work in multiple laboratories.

A chemical synthesis—synthesis, in its present meaning, begins with the selection of chemical product target, which often possesses academic, industrial or therapeutic interest to the broader aims of the research effort. Secondary practical concerns also come into play, including researcher availability, availability of material resources (necessary equipment, chemical building blocks), and research budget. A research grant proposal is often submitted to a funding agency (such as National Science Foundation or National Institutes of Health), which describes the background/proposed synthesis and research plans, and secondary concerns. For instance, a prior developed reaction methodology may highlight particular man-made or natural compounds that would serve the purposes of the effort, in highlighting the breadth of the new methodology and possibly providing facile access to complex natural products. Once the target or targets are established, the next critical phase begins, that of synthetic design, typically in modern efforts, in the area of organic synthesis, using retrosynthetic analysis, as championed by E.J. Corey and others.

An eventual step is a selection of compounds that are known as reagents or reactants. Reactants are compounds used in a reaction that combines to form the product of the reaction. Various reaction types can be applied to these to synthesize the product or an intermediate product. This requires mixing the compounds in a reaction vessel such as a chemical reactor or a simple round-bottom flask. Many reactions require some form of work-up procedure before the final product is isolated. The isolation (purification) of the product then proceeds via a variety of methods.

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