This paper offers a perspective on mechanochemistry and offers summarizing commentary on the Faraday Discussion 170, "Mechanochemistry: From Functional Solids to Single Molecules". The connection between the mechanical and the chemical worlds dates back to our earliest written records and beyond, but its renaissance over the past decade or so has had an impact on a huge swathe of modern science...

Over the past decade, mechanochemistry has emerged as a powerful methodology in the search for sustainable alternatives to conventional solvent-based synthetic routes. Mechanochemistry has already been successfully applied to the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), organic compounds, metal oxides, coordination compounds and organometallic complexes. In the main group arena, e...

Mechanochemistry meansmechanical breakage of intramolecular bonds by external force and must be differentiated from molecular solid-state chemistry, where contacts between micronized molecular solids are created by the mechanical action for mutual approach of the reacting centers. After an outline of the mechanistic differences, the varied mechanochemistry is discussed. Grinding, milling, shear...

The scientific community’s general interest in using mechanical energy to trigger or facilitate chemical reactivity has been growing at a speedy pace. In particular, in recent years, organic chemistry has witnessed a constant flow of examples where the use of mechanochemical techniques proved not only to outperform traditional solution-based methodologies, but also enabled access to otherwise i...

Mechanochemistry deals with reactions induced by the input of mechanical energy - for example by impacts within a vibratory ball mill. The technique has a long history with significant contributions from Ostwald, Carey Lea and, notably, Faraday. Mechanochemistry has subsequently seen application in a variety of areas of materials science including mechanical alloying in metallurgy, the synthesi...

Mechanochemistry is becoming more widespread as a technique for molecular synthesis with new mechanochemical reactions being discovered at increasing frequency. Whilst mechanochemical methods are solvent free and can therefore lead to improved sustainability metrics, it is more likely that the significant differences between reaction outcomes, reaction selectivities and reduced reaction times w...

Regarding the activation of chemical reactions, today’s chemist is used to thinking in terms of thermochemistry, electrochemistry, and photochemistry, which is reflected in the organization and content of the standard physical chemistry textbooks. The fourth way of chemical activation, mechanochemistry, is usually less well-known. The purpose of the present review is to give a survey of the cla...