Additive Manufacturing Technologies: 3D Printing in Organic Synthesis

Abstract

The manufacturing of a three‐dimensional product from a computer‐driven digital model (3D printing) has found extensive applications in several fields. Additive manufacturing technologies offer the possibility to fabricate ad hoc tailored products on demand, at affordable prices, and have been employed to make customized and complex items for actual sale. However, despite the great progress and the countless opportunities offered by the 3D printing technology, surprisingly a relatively limited number of applications have been documented in organic chemistry. This Minireview will focus specifically on the exploitation of additive manufacturing technologies in the synthesis of organic compounds, and, in particular, on the use of 3D‐printed catalysts and 3D printed reactors, and on the fabrication and use of 3D printed flow reactors.

Manufactured chemistry: Rethinking unit operation design in the age of additive manufacturing

“…Very recently Rossi et al wrote a review of the state of the art of application of additive manufacturing for organic synthesis reactions and reactors …”

Integrating Reactors and Catalysts through Three‐Dimensional Printing: Efficiency and Reusability of an Impregnated Palladium on Silica Monolith in Sonogashira and Suzuki Reactions

“…The main manufacturing techniques used by 3D‐printing for the synthesis of monolithic catalysts include fused deposition modeling (FDM), direct ink writing (robocasting) and stereo‐lithography (SLA) . Several groups recently described the use of 3D printing techniques and different strategies to obtain monolithic structures in which different metal species are immobilized . A good example of this is the 3D‐printing of polymers as negative copies of the template, which are then removed in the calcination process, generating the final ceramic structure with the desired pores and channels .…”

“…[29] Several groups recently described the use of 3D printing techniques and different strategies to obtain monolithic structures in which different metal species are immobilized. [30] A good example of this is the 3D-printing of polymers as negative copies of the template, which are then removed in the calcination process, generating the final ceramic structure with the desired pores and channels. [31] This procedure necessarily calls for the use of a mold.…”

High‐Performance Materials for 3D Printing in Chemical Synthesis Applications

“…[13,14] Traditionally, microreactors are commonly made from metals which limits their usability for chemical synthesis applications as they do not withstand corrosive conditions (i.e., strong bases and/or acids), are nontransparent and can only be machined to simple geometries as required, for example, in heat exchangers. [21][22][23] These reactors have, for example, been used for the synthesis of small pharmaceutical molecules. Flow-through "chemistry-on-chip" synthesis has the potential to revolutionize chemistry by ensuring more stable reaction conditions and new reaction pathways: ultrafast mixing, kinetic reaction control, or thermodynamic nonequilibrium conditions which are inaccessible via standard batch synthesis.…”