Combination of a customized robotic system with a TLC scanner for high-throughput reaction screening

Combination of a new and highly efficient robotic system for high-throughput reaction screening with a thin-layer chromatography (TLC) scanner is described. The system consists of a parallel synthesis robot capable of performing up to several hundred reactions in parallel and a second robot for analytical sample workup, dilution, and TLC-spotting. The automatically prepared TLC plates are analyzed with a modern TLC scanner which gives rapidly semi-quantitative analytical results on the outcome of the single reactions. Several automated chemistry examples clearly demonstrate the high efficiency of this combined system and its superiority compared to more classical approaches, e.g., HPLC analyses.