Microwave-assisted Synthesis: Review of Recent Developments

The term green chemistry is defined as “the invention, design and application of chemical products and processes to reduce or to eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances”. The major applications of green chemistry principles and practice renders control, regulation, and remediation, hence resultant environmental benefit can be expressed in terms of economic impact .It also involves replacement of traditional methods of heating with that of modern methods of heating such as microwave radiations which helped to reduce carbon footprint as low as possible. Microwave assisted synthesis is an important tool for green chemistry. Microwave radiation, an electromagnetic radiation, which is widely use as a source of heating in organic synthesis. Microwave assisted organic synthesis has emerged as a new “lead” in organic synthesis which makes the chemistry to go green. This technique has provided the excellent momentum for many chemists to switch to microwave assisted chemistry. There has been a dramatic uptake in the use of microwaves as an energy source to promote synthetic transformations. Microwave-assisted synthesis is clearly a method by which the laboratory chemist can achieve goals in a fraction of the time as compared to traditional conductive heating methods . In the present article an attempt was made to focus on what is microwave assisted synthesis, how is it generated and recent development in this area.