Herein we present a continuous flow reactor printed from stainless steel by selective laser melting. The reactor was specifically designed for a fast difluoromethylation reaction with nBuLi as base and fluoroform as atom-economic and inexpensive reagent. The reactor features four inlets to allow introduction of substrate, nBuLi, fluoroform, and a final quench solution. The reaction was completed within less than 2 min at −65 °C. The utilization of stainless steel as reactor material is critical to accomplish the heat transfer as well as the chemical and mechanical resistance that is required for this transformation.

The synthesis and characterization of a novel catalytic system including Pd(OAc)₂ attached to a bis(oxazoline) (=BOX) ligand that is covalently bonded to 3-mercaptopropyl-functionalized silica gel is presented. The catalyst was tested for Suzuki–Miyaura reactions of different aryl halides with phenylboronic acid. The heterogeneity of the catalytic system was investigated using different approaches, indicating that there is virtually no Pd leaching into the reaction solution under the applied reaction conditions. Furthermore, our results show that the catalytic system can be reused multiple times without significant loss of stability or structure.

The combination of metal- and biocatalysis is a challenging but forward-looking topic in synthetic chemistry. The unique selectivity of enzymes paired with the broad range of applications of chemical catalysts enables an undreamed-of number of novel processes. Herein, we describe the application of immobilized phenolic acid decarboxylase (PAD) for the decarboxylation of para-coumaric acid and subsequent Pd-catalyzed Heck cross-coupling with an aryl halide in a fully integrated two-step continuous flow process to synthesize (E)-4-hydroxy-stilbene. The application of a choline chloride-based deep eutectic solvent (DES) proved to be crucial to overcome the problem of solvent compatibility and enabled an increase in substrate concentration (from 5 mM in buffer to 20 mM in DES) as well as a process with a homogeneous starting solution. The two-step process was successfully operated for more than 16 h in continuous flow and full conversion was achieved. The results underline the usefulness of DES to overcome compatibility problems in tandem-catalytic processes. The system benefits from its simplicity due to increased substrate solubility, the possibility to conduct both reactions at their optimal temperatures and the elimination of isolating the reaction intermediate, which is prone to polymerization.