Chemists use electrochemistry to amp up drug manufacturing

Currently, making pharmaceuticals involves creating complex organic molecules that require several chemical steps and intense energy. The process also spawns copious amounts of environmentally harmful -- and usually toxic -- waste.

At the heart of many popular pharmaceuticals are vicinal diamines, which contain carbon-nitrogen chemical bonds, a bioactive foundation for the medicine. According to Song Lin, assistant professor of chemistry, many widely consumed therapeutic agents have these diamines, including prescription-strength flu medicines, penicillin and some anti-cancer drugs.

Lin and his team have developed a technique that creates vicinal diamines more easily and without the toxic waste. The process uses electricity and chemistry -- electrochemistry -- and then employs Earth-abundant manganese.

"The current process generates a lot of waste product to make this chemical bond. When you can create a product electrosynthetically, rather than chemically, it is much more straightforward and sustainable," Lin said.

In addition to Lin as a senior author, "Metal-catalyzed Electrochemical Diazidation of Alkenes" was written by lead author postdoctoral researcher Niankai Fu, graduate student Greg Sauer; Ambarneil Saha and Aaron Loo. Cornell laboratory startup money funded this research, and the National Science Foundation provides funding to Sauer.