Acetonitrile → 1-(4-Bromobutoxy)naphthalene

To demonstrate the utility of the process and the EWOD chips 98 for chemical reactions other than radiochemistry, a simple chemical synthesis (not involving radioisotope) in a volatile organic solvent was performed using an EWOD chip. Due to the “open” structure of an EWOD chip, microliter droplets of organic solvents evaporate very rapidly, especially at elevated temperatures, before chemical reactions can occur. An approach utilized to allow the reactions to progress before the solvent is evaporated was to continually replenish the reaction site with new solvent droplets using the electrowetting mechanism to transport microliter volumes of solvent from a loading site 60 to the reaction site 100. A modified etherification reaction was performed between 1-napthol and dibromobutane in acetonitrile (MeCN; bp. 82° C.) to yield 1-(4-bromobutoxy) naphthalene. The reaction is shown schematically in FIG. 30. In this chemical synthesis, 1-napthol (74 mM; 2 μL) was first allowed to be reacted with K2CO3 (250 mM; 1 μL) in MeCN at 60° C. for 3 minutes. MeCN was continuously added to the reaction droplet to maintain a liquid phase reaction. Subsequently, dibromobutane solution in MeCN (3.7 M; 1 μL) was added to the reaction site and the substitution reaction was performed at 60° C. for 5 minutes.