Kazuhiro Okamoto

Remarkable advances have recently been achieved in the application of electrochemical methodology in synthetic chemistry area. In the past few decades, various oxidative electrochemical reactions have reportedly been enhanced using a nitromethane–lithium perchlorate electrolyte system. Herein, we summarise our efforts toward the skeletal modification of proline residue and nitrogen‐containing nucleoside analogues (azanucleosides) via electrosynthesis.

The electrochemical [3+2] cycloaddition of phenols and alkenes in a laminar‐flow microreactor was realized at an unprecedentedly low electrolyte concentration (0.001–0.01 M) owing to low solution resistance derived from the narrow electrode distance. An overoxidation of the resulting cycloadducts (dihydrobenzofuran derivatives) was avoided through the optimization of the reactor configuration, and nine of dihydrobenzofuran derivatives are successfully synthesized in our system without any oxidant. Furthermore, simple scale‐up was enabled by using parallel stacked flow cell system.