Effect of segmented fluid flow, sonication and phase transfer catalysis on biphasic reactions in capillary microreactors

The contact between immiscible liquids in a microfluidic system creating segmented flow offers great potential in the study of biphasic reactions in organic chemistry with significant advantages with respect to conventional flask techniques. For a simple biphasic hydrolysis, we show that the application of various reaction conditions in microreactors using segmented flow can dramatically increase the reaction rate, especially when sonication and phase transfer catalysis are combined with segmentation.