Miniaturized continuous flow reaction vessels: influence on chemical reactions.

This review offers an overview of the relatively young research area of continuous flow lab-on-a-chip for synthetic applications. A short introduction on the basic aspects of lab-on-a-chip is given in the first part. Subsequently, the effects of downscaling reaction vessels as well as the advantages of the continuous flow microfluidic approach over conventional chemical laboratory batch methodologies are illustrated by a number of examples of organic reactions carried out in microfluidic devices. The last part deals with a key issue of the lab-on-a-chip approach, viz. the integration of the microreactor with the analytical instrumentation to achieve high-throughput reaction monitoring.