Olefin Metathesis on a TLC Plate as a Tool for a High‐Throughput Screening of Catalyst‐Substrate Sets

A methodology for screening either various catalysts for a given metathesis reaction, i.e., ring opening-ring closing alkene metathesis (RO-RCM) and cross-metathesis (CM), or various substrates for a given pre-catalyst on a thin layer chromatography (TLC) plate has been developed. As the substrates elute with the solvent, this TLC-based system acts as a heterogeneous catalyst bed (TLC reactor). Selected promising catalyst candidates were screened on a TLC plate and their initial catalytic potential as observed in the TLC test was later fully confirmed in a classical heterogeneous reaction set-up using standard commercially available silica (D11-10). Reacting polyfunctional, natural product-like substrates in our TLC reactor allows the simultaneous screening of various substrates and the convenient micro-scale preparation and isolation of potentially biologically active products.