A team at the University of Chicago, Illinois, USA, has developed a novel approach for finding new multicomponent reactions. Such reactions are employed extensively in many areas of organic chemistry but studying them and finding new and useful reactions is difficult without complex labeling and analytical methods.

The team showed that parallel mass spectrometric screening can be used to home in on three-component organic transformations occurring on self-assembled monolayers. They demonstrated proof of principle by identifying a simple organic phosphine that can catalyze a previously unknown condensation of siloxyalkynes, aldehydes and amines. The reaction efficiently produces 3-hydroxyamides with high diastereoselectivity.

• Three-component reaction discovery enabled by mass spectrometry of self-assembled monolayers
  T. J. Montavon, J. Li, J. R. Cabrera-Pardo, M. Mrksich, S. A. Kozmin,
  Nature Chem. 2011.
  DOI: 10.1038/nchem.1212