He studied chemistry at the Leibniz University Hannover where he received his diploma degree in 2008. He is currently performing his doctoral studies at Hannover under the supervision of Prof. Andreas Kirschning with the aid of a scholarship by the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie. In 2010 he spent several months in the group of Prof. S. V. Ley at Cambridge University (UK). His research is focussed on the development of an inductively heated micro flow system for organic synthesis.A key aspect of his work is the implementation of a multistep reaction and an immobilised catalyst into micro flow systems. Sascha Ceylan (right) was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1981 and studied chemistry at Leibniz University Hannover and at Imperial College London under the guidance of Prof. A. G. M. Barrett (UK). He received his diploma degree in 2007 and thereafter began his doctoral studies in Hannover under the supervision of Prof. A. Kirschning. Following a research stay at the University of Hong Kong (Prof. P. Toy) he received his PhD early 2011. His scientific interest focuses on developing micro flow systems, especially inductively heated reactors, and investigations on palladium catalysed Umpolung reactions. Andreas Kirschning studied chemistry at the University of Hamburg and Southampton University (UK). In Hamburg, he joined the group of Prof. E. Schaumann and received his PhD in 1989 working in the field of organosilicon chemistry. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) with Prof. H. G. Floss, supported by a Feodor-Lynen scholarship of the Alexander-von Humboldt foundation, he started his independent research at the Clausthal University of Technology in 1991, where he finished his habilitation in 1996. In 2000 he moved to the Leibniz University Hannover and became a director of the institute of organic chemistry. He is one of the editors of RO ¨MPP online, Natural Products Reports and The Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. His research interests cover structure elucidation as well as the total synthesis and mutasynthesis of natural products, biomedical biopolymers, and synthetic technology (solid-phase assisted synthesis, microreactors, inductive heating).

Laboratory scaled flow-through processes have seen an explosive development over the past decade and have become an enabling technology for improving synthetic efficiency through automation and process optimization.

The heat is on! Ferromagnetic materials heated by induction in an electromagnetic field have found synthetic application. Best results were obtained when superparamagnetic nanoparticles coated with SiO2 were incorporated in a microfluidic reactor and transformations were performed under flow conditions. These magnetic particles can be doped with Pd and used as heated heterogeneous catalysts.

Superparamagnetic nanoparticles coated with silica gel or alternatively steel beads are new fixed-bed materials for flow reactors that efficiently heat reaction mixtures in an inductive field under flow conditions. The scope and limitations of these novel heating materials are investigated in comparison with conventional and microwave heating. The results suggest that inductive heating can be compared to microwave heating with respect to rate acceleration. It is also demonstrated that a very large diversity of different reactions can be performed under flow conditions by using inductively heated flow reactors. These include transfer hydrogenations, heterocyclic condensations, pericyclic reactions, organometallic reactions, multicomponent reactions, reductive cyclizations, homogeneous and heterogeneous transition-metal catalysis. Silica-coated iron oxide nanoparticles are stable under many chemical conditions and the silica shell could be utilized for further functionalization with Pd nanoparticles, rendering catalytically active heatable iron oxide particles.

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