Synthesis of Cyclic Imides Using Microwave Radiation

Abstract

Allowing many chemical reactions to be completed within minutes, microwave heating has revolutionized preparative chemistry. This is a green technology and is becoming widely adopted in both academic and industrial laboratories. Heterocycles are very important functional groups especially in medicinal chemistry. Not only are they pivotal in the synthesis of drugs but also form part of the structure of a diversity of drugs, vitamins, natural products and biomolecules. In this research a clean green method was implemented for the preparation of different cyclic imides from acid anhydrides using aniline or N-substituted anilines with microwave radiation as the energy source. The unsubstituted imides were synthesized by reacting the acid anhydrides with urea using imidazole as a catalyst. These compounds will be evaluated against antibacterial and antifungal species.